River
Li Po the little boat is gone
that carried you ten thousand li
downstream past the gibbons calling
all the way from both banks and they
too are gone and the forests they
were calling from and you are gone
and every sound you heard is gone
now there is only the river
that was always on its own way
— 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 by Bernd Thaller is used under Creative Commons Attribution license. The original image can be found here.
