HEARING THE NAMES OF THE VALLEYS
Finally the old man is telling
the forgotten names
and the names of the stones they came from
for a long time I asked him the names
and when he says them at last
I hear no meaning
and cannot remember the sounds
I have lived without knowing
the names for the water
from one rock
and the water from another
and behind the names that I do not have
the color of water flows all day and all night
the old man tells me the name for it
and as he says it I forget it
there are names for the water
between here and there
between places now gone
except in the porcelain faces
on the tombstones
and places still here
and I ask him again
the name for the color of water
wanting to be able to say it
as though I had known it all my life
without giving it a thought
— W.S. Merwin, from his 1988 book The Rain in the Trees. Copyright © 1988 by W. S. Merwin. Used by permission of the publisher, Knopf.
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Featured photo by Steve Jurvetson used under an Attribution 2.0 Generic License (CC BY 2.0). The original image can be found here.
