Christian Wiman Poems

No remembering now
when the apple sapling was blown
almost out of the ground.
No telling how,
...

Lord is not a word.
Song is not a salve.
Suffer the child, who lived
on sunlight and solitude.
...

Love's last urgency is earth
and grief is all gravity

and the long fall always
back to earliest hours
...

After love
discovers it,
the little burn
or birthmark
...

I have no illusion
some fusion
of force and form
will save me,
bewilderment
...

Brachest, she called it, gentling grease
over blanching yolks with an expertise
honed from three decades of dawns
at the Longhorn Diner in Loraine,
...