Once in Spring

W. S. Merwin

I S S U E 1 5 0, S P R I N G 1 9 9 9

A sentence continues a er thirty years

it wakes in the silence of the same room
the words that come to it a er the long comma
existed all that time wandering in space
as points of light travel unseen through ages
of which they alone are the measure and arrive
at last to tell of something that came to pass
before they ever began or meant anything

longer ago than that Pierre let himself in

through the gate under the cherry tree and said
Jacques is dead and his feet rustled the bronze leaves
of the cherry tree the October leaves fallen
before he set out to walk on their curled summer
then as suddenly Pierre was gone without warning
and the others all the others who were announced
a er they had gone with what they had of their summer
and the cherry tree was done and went the way of its leaves

as they wake in the sentence the words remember

but each time only a remnant and it may be
that they say little and there is the unspoken
morning late in spring the early light passing
and the cuckoo hiding beyond its voice and once more
the oriole that was silent from age to age
voices heard once only and then long listened for