To the Hand
What the eye sees is a dream of sight
what it wakes to
is a dream of sight
and in the dream
for every real lock
there is only one real key
and it’s in some other dream
now invisible
it’s the key to the one real door
it opens the water and the sky both at once
it’s already in the downward river
with my hand on it
my real hand
and I am saying to the hand
turn
open the river
— W.S. Merwin, Writings to an Unfinished Accompaniment, 1973
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Photo by Larry Cameron, from the book he put together with W.S. Merwin, What is a Garden?.