Friday, January 22, 2010

By Dark

By Dark

by W. S. Merwin

When it is time I follow the black dog

into the darkness that is the mind of day

I can see nothing but the black dog
the dog I know going ahead of me

not looking back oh it is the black dog
I trust now in my turn after the years

when I had all the trust of the black dog
through an age of brightness and through shadow

on into the blindness of the black dog
where the rooms of the dark were already known

and had no fear in them for the black dog
leading me carefully up the blind stairs.

"By Dark" by W. S. Merwin, from The Shadow of Sirius. © Copper Canyon Press, 2008.



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