The white keys that have no song of their own

               

                                 by W. S. Merwin

O Silent Hands

Hands born of silence hands of silence

hands born of darkness hands of darkness

left hand of silence right hand of silence

hands of darkness in clear daylight

fingers of fire without sound or brightness

silent hands that bring music to pass

and it goes on echoing day and night

silent fingers' touch on the strings

or on the white keys that have no song of their own

finger ends commanding the dark openings in the flute

and it takes up its song of distance

the music touches the waiting darness of the heart

touches it once and without recognizing it

and the silent heart welcomes the song home

The Laughing Child

When she looked down from the kitchen window

into the back yard and the brown wicker

baby carriage in which she had tucked me

three months old to lie out in the fresh air

of my first January the carriage

was shaking she said and went on shaking

and she saw I was lying there and laughing

she told me about it later it was

something that reassured her in a life

in which she had lost everyone she loved

before I was born and she had begun

to believe that she might be able to

keep me as I lay there in the winter

laughing it was what she was thinking of

later when she told me that I had been

a happy child and she must have kept that

through the gray cloud of all her days and now

out of the horn of dreams of my own life

I wake again into the laughing child.

The Mapmaker

Vermeer's geographer goes on looking

out of the window at a world that he

alone sees while in the room around him

the light has not moved as the centuries

have revolved in silence behind their clouds

beyond the leaves the seasons the numbers

he has not seen them out of that window

the world he sees is there as we see him

looking out at the light beyond the window

Under the Tree of Idleness

This is where I was going the whole time

when they thought I was lost and were looking

for me everywhere I was right here

but as look as they were looking for me

they walked past and never laid eyes on me

it was only when one stumbled on me

by accident that I seemed to have been

found for a moment before I was gone

again following shadows on the leaves

of the oldest limb where they might never

have been noticed but I watched them as though

I was remembering after a long

time without seeing them although that had been

no time in the life of the tree where I

had heard far away a voice calling to

someone and asking what are you doing

until I answered to call it nothing

From "Nine Poems," The American Poetry Review July/August 2014.