Beginning
Long before spring
king of the black cranes
rises one day
from the black
needle’s eye
on the white plain
under the white sky
the crown turns
and the eye
drilled clear through his head
turns
it is north everywhere
come out he says
come out then
the light is not yet
divided
it is a long way
to the first
anything
come even so
we will start
bring your nights with you
— W.S. Merwin, from The Carrier of Ladders (1970), which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1971
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Photo of the Japanese cranes by Dominic Alves is used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License (CC BY 2.0). This photo, and others from this photographer, can be found on Flickr here.
Margo Berdeshevsky says
“…come even so
we will start
bring your nights with you”
… In these days, these words we need, more than ever before…thank you to William and to all the light he brings to our nights, before, and before, and after……with care, Margo