“The Night Plums” by W.S. Merwin

Years afterward in the dark
in the middle of winter I saw them again
the wild 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