A Blessing
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their
happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the
darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.
One of the most admired American
poets of his generation, James Wright (1927-80) wrote contemplative, sturdy,
and generous poems with an honesty, clarity, and stylistic range matched by
very few--then or now. Born to a working-class family in Ohio, Wright was
educated at Kenyon College, and though he traveled to Europe and lived in New
York City, in his poetry he returned in an often elegiac mode to his
industrially marred but still suggestive native Midwestern landscape. Writing
with a "lonely wisdom" of life's fragility, Wright has few peers; his
regrets over the limits of mortality, love and language are tempered, with
utmost tenderness, by a sympathetic willingness to experience and endure. In purity
of image, rhythm and solitariness of tone, Wright reflects the work of his
admired Theodore Roethke and Edgar Arlington Robinson, as well as that of
Robert Frost, but the aura of delicately wistful dreaming evoked in matchless
free verse is his alone.
In "A Blessing," Wright
illustrates his love for two horses, two Indian ponies to be more exact. While
he and his acquaintance are driving on the highway, they notice two ponies that
are confined behind a fence. They decide to stop the car and fool around with
the ponies. The occasion is night supported by line 2, "Twilight bounds
softly forth on the grass."
Both Wright and his companion feel obligated to trespass,
because they climbed over the dangerous fence, which is stated in line 7:
"We step over the barbed wire into the pasture." That conviction by
them demonstrates the passion they have for the ponies, for the barbed wire
fence delivering injury is a great possibility.
These ponies are quite friendly as stated in lines 5 and 6:
"They have come gladly out of the willows / To welcome my friend and
me."
Line 8, "Where they have been grazing all day,
alone," gives a sense of abandonment or maybe they are wild but tamed
ponies, which make them tolerant to Wright and his companion.
Furthermore, they may have not been touched by humans for a
long time is another reason for their carefree attitude toward the couple.
Lines 9 and 10 also present the impression that the ponies have little or no
human interaction at all, which makes all the sense for their ecstatic attitude
while being petted.
As line 9 states: "They ripple tensely, they cannot
hardly contain their happiness." This line indicates that the ponies are
jumping hysterically up and down in joy. His love for one of the ponies goes a
bit too far, for he compares it to a woman in lines 20 and 21: "And the
light breeze moves me to caress her long ear / That is delicate as the skin
over a girl's wrist."
What happens at the end? After a simple, sensuous description of stepping over barbed wire into the field with Indian Ponies, the poem abruptly changes. The speaker (the "I" in the poem ) stops describing external action. He shifts to the inner experience of his happiness. The ponies are a blessing and being in their company blesses him with euphoria.
"Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom."
The last two lines
surprise us with their bold originality;
Rapport with the natural world is a common experience, but the speaker here
reacts intensely. He expresses an imaginative level of that experience,
allowing us to recognize our own feelings in a new way. If he'd ended the poem
at "wrist", we could not possibly have imagined the powerful idea of
spirit transforming into blossom.
