The Tao Jones Personal Average

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A poem by Richard Wilbur

Ballade for the Duke of Orleans

who offered a prize at Blois, circa 1457, for the best ballade employing the line "Je meurs de soif auprès de la fontaine."[I am dying of thirst beside the fountain.]

Flailed from the heart of the water in a bow,
He took the falling fly; my line went taut;
Foam was in an uproar where he drove below;
In spangling air I fought him and was fought.
Then, wearied to the shallows, he was caught,
Gasped in the net, lay still and stony-eyed.
It was no feeling iris I had sought.
I die of thirst, here at the fountain-side.

Down in the harbor's flow and counter-flow
I left my ships with hopes and heroes fraught
Ten times more golden than the sun could show,
Calypso gave the darkness I besought.
Oh, but her fleecy touch was dearly bought:
All spent, I wakened by my only bride,
Beside whom every vision is but nought,
And die of thirst, here at the fountain-side.

Where does that plenty dwell, I'd like to know,
Which fathered poor Desire, as Plato taught?
Out in the real and endless waters go
Conquistadors and stubborn Argonaut.
Where the Buddha bathed, the golden bowl he brought
Gilded the stream, but stalled its living tide.
The sunlight withers as the verse is wrought.
I die of thirst, here at the fountain-side.


ENVOI

Duke, keep your coin. All men are born distraught,
And will not for the world be satisfied,
Whether we live in fact, or but in thought:
We die of thirst, here at the fountain-side.