Far Company by W.S. Merwin
I like the circle this poem makes, starting with the speaker hearing the birds and ending with the idea of hearing them again in the future after they have been forgotten. Perhaps I’m just feeling nostalgic because I read a few blog posts today about things I had forgotten.
Far Company
By W. S. Merwin
At times now from some margin of the day
I can hear birds of another country
not the whole song but a brief phrase of it
out of a music that I may have heard
once in a moment I appear to have
forgotten for the most part that full day
no sight of which I can remember now
though it must have been where my eyes were then
that knew it as the present while I thought
of somewhere else without noticing that
singing when it was there and still went on
whether or not I noticed now it falls
silent when I listen and leaves the day
and flies before it to be heard again
somewhere ahead when I have forgotten
