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)
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