OCTOBER

by W.S. Merwin

I remember how I would say, “I will gather

These pieces together,

Any minute now I will make

A knife out of a cloud.”

Even then the days

Went leaving their wounds behind them,

But, “Monument,” I kept saying to the grave,

“I am still your legend.”

There was another time

When our hands met and the clocks struck

And we lived on the point of a needle, like angels.

I have seen the spider’s triumph

In the palm of my hand. Above

My grave, that thoroughfare,

There are words now that can bring

My eyes to my feet, tamed.

Beyond the trees wearing names that are not their own

The paths are growing like smoke.

The promises have gone,

Gone, gone, and they were here just now.

There is the sky where they laid their fish.

Soon it will be evening.

– W. S. Merwin, “October” from The Moving Target (1963), also found in The Second Four Books of Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 1993) and Migration: New and Selected Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2005).