A ball will bounce; but less and less. It's not <br />A light-hearted thing, resents its own resilience. <br />Falling is what it loves, and the earth falls <br />So in our hearts from brilliance, <br />Settles and is forgot. <br />It takes a sky-blue juggler with five red balls <br /> <br />To shake our gravity up. Whee, in the air <br />The balls roll around, wheel on his wheeling hands, <br />Learning the ways of lightness, alter to spheres <br />Grazing his finger ends, <br />Cling to their courses there, <br />Swinging a small heaven about his ears. <br /> <br />But a heaven is easier made of nothing at all <br />Than the earth regained, and still and sole within <br />The spin of worlds, with a gesture sure and noble <br />He reels that heaven in, <br />Landing it ball by ball, <br />And trades it all for a broom, a plate, a table. <br /> <br />Oh, on his toe the table is turning, the broom's <br />Balancing up on his nose, and the plate whirls <br />On the tip of the broom! Damn, what a show, we cry: <br />The boys stamp, and the girls <br />Shriek, and the drum booms <br />And all come down, and he bows and says good-bye. <br /> <br />If the juggler is tired now, if the broom stands <br />In the dust again, if the table starts to drop <br />Through the daily dark again, and though the plate <br />Lies flat on the table top, <br />For him we batter our hands <br />Who has won for once over the world's weight.<br /><br />Richard Wilbur<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/juggler/
