"Collected Poems 1943-2004 is the indispensable Wilbur. The emergence of a poet like Wilbur as a hero to a new generation of critics is cause for hope: that readers, not gatekeepers, might rediscover poems written in the spirit of generosity and care, and disciplined by the idea of an uncaptive audience."--The New York Times Book Review

"The work in these five hundred or so pages has been one of the saving graces of poetry in our time, as beautiful and moving as it is artful and accomplished. This collected edition will see a reader through quiet evenings and noisy Metro commutes, indeed through one's whole life."--The Washington Post Book World

Fringing the woods, the stone walls, and the lanes,

Old thickets everywhere have come alive,

Their new leaves reaching out in fans of five

From tangles overarched by this year's canes.

They have their flowers too, it being June,

And here or there in brambled dark-and-light

Are small, five-petaled blooms of chalky white,

As random-clustered and as loosely strewn

As the far stars, of which we now are told

That ever faster do they bolt away,

And that a night may come in which, some say,

We shall have only blackness to behold. But I shall see the August weather spur

Berries to ripen where the flowers were--

Dark berries, savage-sweet and worth the wait--

And there will come the moment to be quick

And save some from the birds, and I shall need

Two pails, old clothes in which to stain and bleed,

And a grandchild to talk with while we pick.