Kore

"I have watched your smile in your sleep

and I know it is the boat 

in which my sun rides under the earth

all night on the wave of your breath

no wonder the days grow short

and waking without you

is the beginning of winter

"How is it that I can hear your bird voice now

trickling among the ice towers

through the days of the anvil

as the year turns I carry an echo

over my own stones and I listen

my eyes are open looking ahead

I walk a little ahead of myself touching

the air where nobody sees you

and the sun as it sets through the forest of windows

unrolls slowly

its unrepeatable secret

all the colors of autumn without the leaves

"You were shaking and an air full of leaves

flowed out of the dark falls of your hair

down over the rapids of your knees

until I touched you and you grew quiet

and raised to me

your hands and your eyes and showed me

twice my face burning in amber

"Already  on the first hill with you beside me
at the foot of the ruins I saw through the day
and went on without pausing
loving the unheld air
as a wing might love it flying
toward you unknowing
knowing

"When they are together our hands are of an age

and a dark light flows up between them

into its feathers

We have brought

nothing with us

but what has come of itself

we pass the stone fragments

the ancient smiles holding out

no hands

like the trees their sisters born older

"I trust neither memory nor expectation
but even the white days of cities
belong to what they do not see
even the heart of the doubters' light is gold
even when you are not with me
in the flowerless month of the door god
you look at me with your eyes of arrival

"Thirty days after the solstice

forms of ripe wheat

emerge from the tips of the branches

Far outside them

here

where you have never been

I reach for you with my eyes

I call you with my body

that knows your one name

"Days when I do not hear you 

it seems that the season flows backward

but it is only

I

of hollow streets

deaf smoke

rain on water

"We cross the smooth night lake together

in the waiting boat

we are welcomed without lights

again and again we emerge by day

hand in hand

from all four corridors at once

under the echoing dome

guided by what has not been said 

"The shadow of my moving foot 

feels your direction

you come toward me

bringing the gold through the rust

you step to me through the city of amber

under the moon and the sun

voice not yet in the words

what is spoken is already

another year."

-- W.S. Merwin

Details:

"Kore" by W.S. Merwin - to read the complete piece (nope, this isn't the whole thing), see his collection The Compass Flower.


Photos by Josh.


Glasses//Ray Ban
Necklace//Antique
Dress (worn as blouse)//Vintage, 1980s
Skirt//Vintage, 1980s
Trench Coat//Vintage, Thrifted
Cardigan//Charlotte Russe
Shoes//Vintage, 1980s via The Paraders