Once only when the summer
was nearly over and my own
hair had been white as the day’s clouds
for more years than I was counting
I stood by the garden at evening
Paula was still weeding around
flowers that open after dark
and I looked up to the clear sky
and saw the new moon and at that
moment from behind me a band
of dark birds and then another
after it flying in silence
long curving wings hardly moving
the plovers just in from the sea
and the flight clear from Alaska
half their weight gone to get them home
but home now arriving without
a sound as it rose to meet them
——W.S. Merwin, from The Moon Before Morning
The Bell of One Morning
The blackbird came in the dark
in the shadow before the first light
of a cold June
thin rain falling a few drops at a time
like friends needing no words
arriving among the infant leaves
of the walnut tree
like small fingers in sleep
after sunrise the bell
did not know why it was ringing
it was for the old schoolteacher
who had fallen silent in the dark
——W.S. Merwin, from The Moon Before Morning
Before Midsummer Above the River
Ghosts of words
circle the empty room
where I was young
stars in daylight
not a sound from them
not one question
they know me
in their unseen galaxy
they are my own
the walls that were
whitewashed when they were younger
have turned into
maps of absence
my dog three years gone
and more
oh more
barks in a dream
beside my left hand
watchful as ever
waking me
from that dream
where is she
where am I
——W.S. Merwin, from The Moon Before Morning
One Summer
It is hard now to believe that we really
went back that time years ago to the small town
a mile square along the beach and a little more
than a century old where I had been taken
when I was a child and nothing seemed to have changed
not the porches along the quiet streets
nor the faces on the rockers nor the sea smell
from the boardwalk at the end of the block
nor the smells from the cafeteria in a house
like the others along the same sidewalk
nor the hush of the pebbled streets without
cars nor the names of the same few hotels
nor the immense clapboard auditorium
to which my mother had taken me
toa performance ofAida
and you and I walked those streets in a late
youth of our own and along the boardwalk
toward music we heard from the old carousel
——W.S. Merwin, from The Moon Before Morning
The Eternal Return
Because it is not here it is eternal
the stars we consider have long been gone
I cannot recall what I was saying
while clouds melted over the morning sea
here is the same child without a childhood
the whole sentence present in the last word
and the morning of what I do not know
brings back everything that I remember
even what is gone and I know it is gone
and know I will never look on it again
appears to me once more almost complete
in its own time and then gone again
it was watching over me while I slept
——W.S. Merwin, from The Moon Before Morning
Separation
Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color
——W.S. Merwin, from The Moon Before Morning作者: 夜狼 時間: 2017-12-14 16:27
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