#expiatory

Once more the hills are made of remembered darkness torn off and the eye rises from its grave upon its old upon its ancient life

but at a wrong moment

once more the eye reveals the empty river feathers on all the paths the despairing fields the house in which every word faces a wall

and once more it climbs trying to cast again the light in which that landscape was a prospect of heaven

everywhere the vision has just passed out of sight like the shadows sinking into the waking stones each shadow with a dream in its arms each shadow with the same dream in its arms

and the eye must burn again and again through each of its lost moments until it sees

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A Purgatory

William Stanley Merwin  1927-2019

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