W. S. Merwin

At times now from some margin of the day I can hear birds of another country not the whole song but a brief phrase of it out of a music that I may have heard once in a moment I appear to have forgotten for the most part that full day no sight of which I can remember now though it must have been where my eyes were then that knew it as the present while I thought of somewhere else without noticing that singing when it was there and still went on whether or not I noticed now it falls silent when I listen and leaves the day and flies before it to be heard again somewhere ahead when I have forgotten

Matches among other things that were not allowed never would be lying high in a cool blue box that opened in other hands and there they all were bodies clean and smooth blue heads white crowns white sandpaper on the sides of the box scoring fire after fire gone before I could hear the scratch and flare when they were over and catch the smell of the striking I knew what the match would feel like lighting when I was very young a fire engine came and parked in the shadow of the big poplar tree on Fourth Street one night keeping its engine running pumping oxygen to the old woman in the basement when she died the red lights went on burning

for Wendell Berry Each face in the street is a slice of bread wandering on searching somewhere in the light the true hunger appears to be passing them by they clutch have they forgotten the pale caves they dreamed of hiding in their own caves full of the waiting of their footprints hung with the hollow marks of their groping full of their sleep and their hiding have they forgotten the ragged tunnels they dreamed of following in out of the light to hear step after step the heart of bread to be sustained by its dark breath and emerge to find themselves alone before a wheat field raising its radiance to the moon

I will tell you what he told me in the years just after the war as we then called the second world war don't lose your arrogance yet he said you can do that when you're older lose it too soon and you may merely replace it with vanity just one time he suggested changing the usual order of the same words in a line of verse why point out a thing twice he suggested I pray to the Muse get down on my knees and pray right there in the corner and he said he meant it literally it was in the days before the beard and the drink but he was deep in tides of his own through which he sailed chin sideways and head tilted like a tacking sloop he was far older than the dates allowed for much older than I was he was in his thirties he snapped down his nose with an accent I think he had affected in England as for publishing he advised me to paper my wall with rejection slips his lips and the bones of his long fingers trembled with the vehemence of his views about poetry he said the great presence that permitted everything and transmuted it in poetry was passion passion was genius and he praised movement and invention I had hardly begun to read I asked how can you ever be sure that what you write is really any good at all and he said you can't you can't you can never be sure you die without knowing whether anything you wrote was any good if you have to be sure don't write

He that had come that morning, One after the other, Over seven hills, Each of a new color, Came now by the last tree, By the red-colored valley, To a gray river Wide as the sea. There at the shingle A listing wherry Awash with dark water; What should it carry? There on the shelving, Three dark gentlemen. Might they direct him? Three gentlemen. “Cable, friend John, John Cable,” When they saw him they said, “Come and be company As far as the far side.” “Come follow the feet,” they said, “Of your family, Of your old father That came already this way.” But Cable said, “First I must go Once to my sister again; What will she do come spring And no man on her garden? She will say ‘Weeds are alive From here to the Stream of Friday; I grieve for my brother’s plowing,’ Then break and cry.” “Lose no sleep,” they said, “for that fallow: She will say before summer, ‘I can get me a daylong man, Do better than a brother.’ ” Cable said, “I think of my wife: Dearly she needs consoling; I must go back for a little For fear she die of grieving.” “Cable,” they said, “John Cable, Ask no such wild favor; Still, if you fear she die soon, The boat might wait for her.” But Cable said, “I remember: Out of charity let me Go shore up my poorly mother, Cries all afternoon.” They said, “She is old and far, Far and rheumy with years, And, if you like, we shall take No note of her tears.” But Cable said, “I am neither Your hired man nor maid, Your dog nor shadow Nor your ape to be led.” He said, “I must go back: Once I heard someone say That the hollow Stream of Friday Is a rank place to lie; And this word, now I remember, Makes me sorry: have you Thought of my own body I was always good to? The frame that was my devotion And my blessing was, The straight bole whose limbs Were long as stories— Now, poor thing, left in the dirt By the Stream of Friday Might not remember me Half tenderly.” They let him nurse no worry; They said, “We give you our word: Poor thing is made of patience; Will not say a word.” “Cable, friend John, John Cable,” After this they said, “Come with no company To the far side. To a populous place, A dense city That shall not be changed Before much sorrow dry.” Over shaking water Toward the feet of his father, Leaving the hills’ color And his poorly mother And his wife at grieving And his sister’s fallow And his body lying In the rank hollow, Now Cable is carried On the dark river; Nor even a shadow Followed him over. On the wide river Gray as the sea Flags of white water Are his company.

When the forests have been destroyed their darkness remains The ash the great walker follows the possessors Forever Nothing they will come to is real Nor for long Over the watercourses Like ducks in the time of the ducks The ghosts of the villages trail in the sky Making a new twilight Rain falls into the open eyes of the dead Again again with its pointless sound When the moon finds them they are the color of everything The nights disappear like bruises but nothing is healed The dead go away like bruises The blood vanishes into the poisoned farmlands Pain the horizon Remains Overhead the seasons rock They are paper bells Calling to nothing living The possessors move everywhere under Death their star Like columns of smoke they advance into the shadows Like thin flames with no light They with no past And fire their only future

All these years behind windows With blind crosses sweeping the tables And myself tracking over empty ground Animals I never saw I with no voice Remembering names to invent for them Will any come back will one Saying yes Saying look carefully yes We will meet again