A SUMMER NIGHT
Years later the cloud brightens in the east
the moon rises out of the long evening
just past midsummer of a cold year
the smell of roses waves through the stone room
open to the north and its sleeping valley
gnarled limbs of walnut trees and brows of extinct
barns blacken against the rising silver of night
so long I have known this that it seems to me
to be mine it has been gone for so long
that I think I have carried it with me
without knowing it was there in the daytime
through talk and in the light of eyes and travelling
in windows it has been there the whole way
on the other side like a face known from
another time from before and afterward
constantly rising and about to appear
– W.S. Merwin, from Travels (1993) and Migration: New & Selected Poems (2005)
To browse through previous featured poems, click here.
To support the preservation of W.S. Merwin’s legacy, please consider a donation to The Merwin Conservancy.
Mark E. Lefebvre says
The moon rose here tonight, huge and orange, and hung like a jack-o-lantern in our white pine. I should have known that this was a night for discovery. The benchmarks of my life, of the passing years, have long been new poems by Mr. Merwin. I have read and re-read them…and, then, tonight, I found this website, this poem and the vivid reminder that another’s words live in me. I will return to learn more and repay the kindnesses of a lifetime.
Thank you.
Pamela Tilley says
We have a crescent moon, in the first quarter. I saw it tonight, in the west, through the branches of our dying ash trees. A quiet summer night with the flicker of a firefly here and there.