Thursday, December 03, 2009

"No shadow" by W.S. Merwin

No Shadow

Dog grief and the love of coffee
lengthen like a shadow of mine

and now that my eyes no longer
swear to anything I look out

Through the cloud light of this autumn
and see the valley where I came

first more than half my life ago
oh more than half with its river

a sky in the palm of a hand
never unknown and never known

never mine and never not mine
beyond it into the distance

the ridges reflect the clouds now
through a morning without shadows

the river still seems not to move
as though it were the same river