I keep looking for what has always been mine

                                                             by W. S. Merwin

Variations to the Accompaniment of a Cloud

          Because I do not hope ever again

to pass this way I sing these

notes now in silence

each in its own time

one morning near the end of spring

among the invisible unheard stars I sing

this one time with the hope that is here

in every breath

may these notes be heard another morning

in another life

in another spring together

          Because I do not hope ever to pass

this way again

one morning late in spring

in the cold rain above the valley I sing
in the old house I came to in my youth
on the ridge looking over the river
a house that had been left to its own silence
for half a century
home for bats and swallows and patches
of sunlight wandering across the floors
under holes in the roof on the day
I first saw it
and recognized it without knowing it
above the same river

          Because I do not hope to see again
this spring morning with its cloud of light
that wakes the blackbird in the trees downhill
from the house I came to long ago
when I was young and the silence
was a summer day
that first summer that I would see
from these windows
I came to see
the plum trees flowering on the slope below
the snow swirling outside the kitchen
I will not see this morning fill
with light again along the green field
under the walnut trees those silent ancients
I reach out to it with words
it never hears

          Because I do not hope ever to find
my way again to the moments of pure
single fortune and the unrepeated mistakes
that led me here
I look back in wonder
at how I found you and we came to be here
where has it gone
never was there one step backward

          Although I do not hope to know again
what I have known since the beginning
not for a moment has it left me
I keep looking for what has always been mine
searching for it even as I

think of leaving it
my love was always
woven with leaving
moment by moment leaving
the one time

From W. S. Merwin, Garden Time, 2016.

When you played the records with needles

                                   by W. S. Merwin

Antique Sound

There was an age when you played the records

with ordinary steel needles which grew blunt

and damaged the grooves or with more expensive

stylus tips said to be tungsten or diamond

which wore down the records and the music receded

but a friend and I had it on persuasive authority

that the best thing was a dry thorn of the right kind

and I knew where to find one of those off to the left

of the Kingston Pike in the shallow swale

that once had been forest and had grown back

into a scrubby wilderness alive with

an earthly choir of crickets blackbirds finches

crows jays the breathing of voles raccoons

rabbits foxes the breeze in the thickets

the thorn bushes humming a high polyphony

all long gone since to improvement but while

that fine dissonance was in tune we rode out

on bicycles to break off dry thorn branches

picking the thorns and we took back the harvest

and listened to Beethoven’s Rassoumoffsky

Quartets echoed from the end of a thorn.

The sound of the water leaving

                                           By W. S. Merwin

Drinking Tea in the Small Hours

An unlabeled green from Korea

second pick from the foothills of summer

taste of distance and slight rustling of leaves

on old trees with names hard to remember

as I listen after heavy rain in the night

the taste is a hush from far away

at the very moment when I sip it

trying to make it last in the knowledge

that I will forget it in the next breath

that it will be lost when I hear the cock crow

any time now across the dark valley

Water Music

As one returned day of a week the white

canoe is here again around and under me

buoying me up in the evening sky

on the blue water of a story

in which I am part of the telling

the lake is part of it just under my hand

in this canoe that does not belong to me

but is lent to me for part of a season

never long enough and the evening light

is not mine and never long enough

the rill of waters slips past my fingertips

I listen and only I hear it going

I listen to the promises it makes

with the sound of its going from close to me

within reach now by the side of the borrowed

white canoe that is taking me

on the evening sky with the story

never long enough and the promises

made of the sound of the water leaving

Loss

Loss was my brother

is my brother

but I have no image of him

his name which was never used

was Hanson

it had been the name

of my mother's father

who had died as a young man

her child had been taken away

from my mother before

she ever saw him

to be bathed I suppose

they came and told her

that he was perfect in every way

and said they had never

seen such a beautiful child

and then they told her that he was dead

she sustained herself by believing

that he must have been dropped

somewhere just out of her signt

and out of her reach

and had fallen out of his empty name

all my life he has been near me

but I cannot tell you anything

about him

except in his own words

From The American Poetry Review July/August 2014.

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.

Wolf

  Piere Vidal

               by W. S. Merwin

 

I saw the wolf in winter watching on the raw hill
I stood at night on top of the black tower and sang
I saw my mouth in spring float away on the river
I was a child in rooms where the furs were climbing
and each was alone and they had no eyes no faces
nothing inside them any more but the stories
they never breathed as they waved in their dreams of grass
and I sang the best songs that were sung in the world
as long as a song lasts they came by themselves to me
and I loved blades and boasting and shouting as I rode
as though I was the bright day flashing from everything
I loved being with woman and their breath and their skin
and the thought of them carried me like a wind
I uttered terrible things about other men
in a time when tongues were cut out to pay for kissing
but I set my sail for the island of Venus
and a niece of the Emperor in Constantinople
and I could have become the Emperor myself

I won and I won and all the women in the world
were in love with me and they wanted what I wanted
so I thought and every one of them deceived me
I was the greatest fool in the world I was the world’s fool
I have been forgiven and came home as I dreamed
and have seen them all dancing and singing as the ship came in
and I have watched friends die and have worn black and cut off
the tails and ears of all my horses in mourning
and have shaved my head and the heads of my followers
I have been a poor man living in a rich man’s house
and I have gone back to the mountains and for one woman
I have worn the fur of a wolf and the shepherd’s dogs
have run me to earth and I have been left for dead
and have come back hearing them laughing and the furs
were hanging in the same places and I have seen
what is not there I have sung its song I have breathed
its day and it was nothing to you where were you.

Piere Vidal Old

 

                   by Ezra Pound

When I but think upon the great dead days
And turn my mind upon that splendid madness,
Lo! I do curse my strength
And blame the sun his gladness;
For that the one is dead
And the red sun mocks my sadness.

Behold me, Vidal, that was fool of fools!
Swift as the king wolf was I and as strong
When tall stags fled me through the alder brakes,
And every jongleur knew me in his song,
And the hounds fled and the deer fled
And none fled over long.

Even the grey pack knew me and knew fear.
God! how the swiftest hind's blood spurted hot
Over the sharpened teeth and purpling lips!
Hot was that hind's blood yet it scorched me not
As did first scorn, then lips of the Penautier!
Aye ye are fools, if ye think time can blot

From Piere Vidal’s remembrance that blue night.
God! but the purple of the sky was deep!
Clear, deep, translucent, so the stars me seemed
Set deep in crystal; and because my sleep
Rare visitor came not, the Saints I guerdon
For that restlessness Piere set to keep

One more fool's vigil with the hollyhocks.
Swift came the Loba, as a branch that's caught,
Torn, green and silent in the swollen Rhone,
Green was her mantle, close, and wrought
Of some thin silk stuff that's scarce stuff at all,
But like a mist where through her white form fought,

And conquered! Ah God! conquered!
Silent my mate came as the night was still.
Speech? Words? Faugh! Who talks of words and love?!
Hot is such love and silent,
Silent as fate is, and as strong until
It faints in taking and in giving all.

Stark, keen, triumphant, till it plays at death.
God! she was white then, splendid as some tomb
High wrought of marble, and the panting breath
Ceased utterly. Well, then I waited, drew,
Half-sheathed, then naked from its saffron sheath
Drew full this dagger that doth tremble here.

Just then she woke and mocked the less keen blade.
Ah God, the Loba! and my only mate!
Was there such flesh made ever and unmade!
God curse the years that turn such women grey!
Behold here Vidal, that was hunted, flayed,
Shamed and yet bowed not and that won at last.

And yet I curse the sun for his red gladness,
I that have known strath, garth, brake, dale,
And every run-away of the wood through that great
     madness,
Behold me shrivelled as an old oak's trunk
And made men's mock'ry in my rotten sadness!

No man hath heard the glory of my days:
No man hath dared and won his dare as I:
One night, one body and one welding flame!
What do ye own, ye niggards! that can buy
Such glory of the earth? Or who will win
Such battle-guerdon with his 'prowesse high' ?

O age gone lax! O stunted followers,
That mask at passions and desire desires,
Behold me shrivelled, and your mock of mocks;
And yet I mock you by the mighty fires
That burnt me to this ash.

Ah! Cabaret! Ah Cabaret, thy hills again!

Take your hands off me! . . . [Sniffing the air.
Ha! this scent is hot!