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You are here: Home / Poems / “The Night Plums,” by W.S. Merwin

“The Night Plums,” by W.S. Merwin

September 29, 2021 By Sara Tekula

THE NIGHT PLUMS

Years afterward in the dark
in the middle of winter I saw them again
on the sloes on the terraces
flowering in the small hours
after a season of hard cold and the turning
of the night and of the year and of years
when almost all whom I had known there
in other days had gone
and the stones of the barnyard were buried
in sleep and the animals were no more
I watched the white blossoms open
in their own hour naked and luminous
greeting the darkness in silence
with their ancient fragrance

– W.S. Merwin, from his book The Pupil (A.A. Knopf, 2001)


To browse through our archive of W.S. Merwin’s poetry, click here.

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