“Utterance” by W.S. Merwin

Published in: 

The Rain in the Trees, 1987
 

(Knopf)

Sitting over words
very late I have heard a kind of whispered sighing
not far
like a night wind in pines or like the sea in the dark
the echo of everything that has ever
been spoken
still spinning its one syllable
between the earth and silence

The Merwin Conservancy's logo; image displays a palm frond oriented vertically