Monday, February 17, 2014

Shepherd

According to the silence, winter has arrived -
a special kind of winter.  I, its inventor,
watch it freeze in calendars and stare
out of clocks. I do not feel its cold.

Across a certain farm evening crows go flying,
intervals of sky that I have seen before,
the bearing of a river: I advance, a wanderer
out of thought country, that serious, quiet place,

Till according to the silence all the light is gone
and according to the dark all the wanderers are home.

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by William Stafford, 1958