Lyrics: II (17)
First, a poem must be magical,
Then musical as a sea-gull.
It must be a brightness moving
And hold secret a bird’s flowering.
It must be slender as a bell,
And it must hold fire as well.
It must have the wisdom of bows
And it must kneel like a rose.
It must be able to hear
The luminance of dove and deer.
It must be able to hide
What it seeks, like a bride.
And over all I would like to hover
God, smiling from the poem’s cover.
Copyright © 1941, 1942, renewed © 1970 by Jose Garcia Villa; from Doveglion: Collected Poems by Jose Garcia Villa, edited by John Edwin Cowen. Used by permission of Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
José Garcia Villa
José Garcia Villa was born in Manila in 1908. He published several poetry collections in the Philippines and in the United States, including Have Come, Am Here (Viking Press, 1942), which was a finalist for the 1943 Pulitzer Prize. He died in New York City in 1997.