Basho's Child WS Merwin In the Christmas spirit


Basho’s Child
//Beside the Fuji River/ there is a lost child crying/ dead for three hundred years/and who knows how many more/since the evening in autumn/when her mother carried her/out to the water noise/that would cover the sound of her crying/and then walked back into the silence/and the child cried all night/and into the frosty daylight/when the men who discovered her/stood over her like shadows/their hands talking but only/to each other until one of them/at last bent to put something on the leaves beside her/ before they all went away/with the sound of her drying/following him and following the words he would write about her / wherever the words might go
THE SHADOW OF SIRIUS WS MERWIN 2009  p 70
 
 
 

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