DECEMBER AMONG THE VANISHED
The old snow gets up and moves taking its
Birds with it
The beasts hide in the knitted walls
From the winter that lipless man
Hinges echo but nothing opens
A silence before this one
Has left its broken huts facing the pastures
Through their stone roofs the snow
And the darkness walk down
In one of them I sit with a dead shepherd
And watch his lambs
— W.S. Merwin, from his book The Lice and The Second Four Books of Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 1992). Copyright © 1992 by W. S. Merwin. Used by permission of the publishers, www.coppercanyonpress.org.
To browse through our archive of previously posted Poems of the Week, click here.
To support the preservation of W.S. Merwin’s legacy and our efforts to preserve his home and palm forest for future generations, please consider making a tax-deductible donation to The Merwin Conservancy.
Featured photo by Gabriele Negri can be found here and is used under Creative Commons License CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
I can picture the snow with a blanket of beasts walking.
And you. With your lamb. <3