SHAVING WITHOUT A MIRROR
As though there could be more than one center
many skies cleared in the night and there it is
the mountain this face of it still brindled with cloud shadows
if I raised my hand I could touch it like air
high shallow valleys cradling the clear wind
all like a thing remembered where haystacks waited for winter
but now it is so blue would there be eyes in it
looking out from dark nerves as the morning passes in our time
while the sound of a plane rises behind me beyond trees
so that I breathe and reach up to the air and feel water
it is myself the listener to the music
to the clouds in the gray passes and the clear leaves
where are the forest voices now that the forests have gone
and those from above the treeline oh where that fed on fog
of a simpler compound that satisfied them
when did I ever knowingly set hands on a cloud
who have walked in one often following the rim in anger
Brother the world is blind and surely you come from it
where children grow steadily without knowledge of creatures
other than domesticated through rags of woods yet emerge
as the clouds part and sweep on passing southward in spring
fingers crossing the slopes shadows running leaping
all night that peak watched the beacon over the sea
and answered nothing now it turns to the morning
an expression of knowledge above immigrant woods
nothing is native of fire and everything is born of it
then I wash my face as usual
trying to remember a date before the war
coming to a green farm at sunrise dew smell from pastures
after that there were various graduations
this passion for counting has no root of its own
I stand by a line of trees staring at a bare summit
do I think I was born here I was never born
– W.S. Merwin, from Opening the Hand (Atheneum, 1983). Copyright © 1983 by W. S. Merwin. Used with permission of the publishers.
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Photo by Larry Cameron, used with permission.
