"A Measuring Worm"

A Measuring Worm
by Richard Wilbur

This yellow-striped green
Caterpillar, climbing up
The steep window screen,

Constantly (for lack
of a full set of legs) keeps
Humping up his back.

It's as if he sent
By a sort of semaphore
Dark omegas meant

To warn of Last Things.
Although he doesn't know it,
He will soon have wings,

And I too don't know
Toward what undreamt condition
Inch by inch I go.

The signal is sent as the caterpillar crawls over a strange ground, ground where its two colors single it out instead of hiding it. There is at this moment no forest to be changed, no unfathomable depth to be proven, and no blinking lover. An old poet whose hair is white and whose breath is short sits on the threshold of his own dying and is confronted by a Greek character signaling the Last Things. But on that strange ground even the Last Things are fraught with older stories of man's ending. If the gift of blind hope is taken back and the expectancy of death returned, what has become of our benefactor? He saved us from destruction and his guile overthrew the Titans. Are they not once more loosed upon our imagination? Is man no longer the measure of all things? Are we exposed to nothing?