W.S Merwin poems which are resonant

When I was at the reception for WS Merwin and the documentary film "Even though the Whole World is burning, produced by William Coles, and directed by Stefan Schaefer, ostensibly, about his life, mostly from archival work, and with his current wife and stepson's interviews, along with curiously, in some sense, Harold Bloom! ...people asked what  were my favorite poems.  For a person who carries his poems with me wherever I go they are many...so I will start with one that I love: 

I have always loved the story of the Chinese princess carried to the court of the Tibetans.
. 
The Nomad Flute

You that sang to me once sing to me now
let me hear your long lifted note
survive with me
the star is fading
I can think father than that but I forget
do you hear me

do you still hear me
does your air
remember you
o breath of morning
night song morning song
I have with me
all that I do not now
I have lost none of it

but I know better now
than to ask you
where you learned that music
where any of it came from
once there were lions in China

I will listen until the flute stops
and the light is old again.
--WS Merwin

 

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