Like much-loved music things
(when I am at my gladdest)
physical objects themselves
appear to represent
something I can’t see
(not yet)—
something
I cannot recall or imagine
yet whose presence I clearly perceive
the way perhaps the born blind do
the sun.
Like words
most masterfully uttered
these concrete things stand for
invisible things, while
remaining themselves,
their dear selves, without which
I just can’t imagine my life;
I believe in a higher unseeable
life, inconceivable
light
of which light is mere shadow, and yet
already, at times, and with desolation
with bereftness no words can express, miss this light
of the earth, this bright life
I yesterday only began to love, to understand.

Franz Wright received the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Walking to Martha’s Vineyard, his 15th volume of poetry. This poem will appear in his forthcoming collection, God’s Silence, due out in the spring. On October 5, 2005, in Devlin 101, Wright read from his work as part of the Lowell Humanities Series.