That Sweet Flute John Clare

That Sweet Flute John Clare

by Mary Oliver. From West Wind (1997)



That sweet flute John Clare;

that broken branch Eddy Whitman;

Christopher Smart, in the press of blazing electricity;

My uncle the suicide;

Woolf, on her way to the river;

Wolf, of the sorrowful songs;

Swift, impenetrable mask of Dublin;

Schumann, climbing the bridge, leaping into the Rhine;

Ruskin, Cowper;

Poe, rambling in the gloom-bins of Baltimore and Richmond--



light of the world, hold me.