Laundry Poem(s)

For reasons known only to my family and friends here in England, today's poems are about laundry, more or less. The title of the first poem, by Richard Wilbur, comes from St. Augustine. I particularly love Wilbur's idea that the morning air is "all awash with angels" -- it certainly seems that way to me sometimes.

LOVE CALLS US TO THE THINGS OF THIS WORLD by Richard Wilbur

The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,

And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul

Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple.

As false dawn.

Outside the open window

The morning air is all awash with angels.

Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses,

Some are in smocks: but truly there they are.

Now they are rising together in calm swells

Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear

With the deep joy of their impersonal breathing;

Now they are flying in place, conveying

The terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving

And staying like white water; and now of a sudden

They swoon down into so rapt a quiet

That nobody seems to be there.

The soul shrinks

From all that it is about to remember,

From the punctual rape of every blessed day,

And cries,

"Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,

Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam

And clear dances done in the sight of heaven."

Yet, as the sun acknowledges

With a warm look the world's hunks and colors,

The soul descends once more in bitter love

To accept the waking body, saying now

In a changed voice as the man yawns and rises,

"Bring them down from their ruddy gallows;

Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves;

Let lovers go sweet and fresh to be undone,

And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating

Of dark habits,

keeping their difficult balance."

And now, an impromptu creation, filled with puns and mysteries, written spontaneously on the back of an envelope just moments ago by Peter: 

THE WHITES OF YOUR LIVES by Peter Cansell

When your shift is readied

by the suds of bubbling youth,

there is no need for

the old adage “a peck of dirt...”

as Lazy Mary will hang out

with your shirts and skirts

(down the docks.)

So take the offering

of the pleated goffering

of your swanky robes

and accept that

“cleanliness is next to godliness”

and when your shift is done

you’ll feel a satisfaction

that your dirty laundry

which has been aired in public

is now fit for

where?