that had travelled silently along itself all night
while the small stars of spring were yet to be seen and the few
lamps burned by themselves..." – Merwin, "Ancestral Voices"
And the Few Lamps Burned by Themselves
remember we used to hold the world up by lamps of imagination
another name for fires that rise up from the very touch
of a hand if it is underneath listening to the flooded trees
rise up as a flame would from uncertain origins seeds
set a hundred years ago before your own before memories
of such and such before the photographs of ancestors
were lent to relatives and you held them in your hands
the river trees began to mount their productions and bends
but today you hold the one that holds the eagle's nest
she had just flown in from over the city over the course
sounds of metal and sadness to descend on these fierce
sticks plied together over two years so that when you paddle
directly to its gray base you can only wonder if they feel
the flood and the timber wave by the pulse of the current
that shriek that strove a moment ago on its arrival
that shriek that came from a time torn by unseen space
that I could grow to be old and hear again what they did
