One October Night
Far down the other side of the shining valley
one dog is barking like a cuckoo at the strange light
Paula my love never stirred when I
slipped out through the unlit house to look at the night
where the stars I can see and those I will never see
will not ever again be in the same places
as they are at this moment
we could do with a bit of rain but the sky
shows not a hair of cloud and the breeze
scarcely reaches us
the full moon that we claim for October
shines from above the fronds of the tall Howea
we are all here together without knowing it
flying at a speed beyond thinking
the dog has stopped barking the night is still
— W.S. Merwin, from his newest book Garden Time (Copper Canyon Press, 2016). Copyright © 2016 by W. S. Merwin. Used by permission of the publishers, www.coppercanyonpress.org.
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Photo entitled “Hawaiian Nights” by Justin De La Ornellas, used under Creative Commons Attribution – Non Commercial 2.0 Generic License (CC BY-NC 2.0) can be found here.