Vixen

Having heard W. S. Merwin read last night I was taken especially by the magic in the whisper of the image in the poem he read entitled "Vixen". Here it is to recall that, the animal of that sounding/seeing:

Comet of stillness princess of what is over

       high note held without trembling without voice without sound

aura of complete darkness keeper of the kept secrets

       of the destroyed stories the escaped dreams the sentences

never caught in words warden of where the river went

       touch of its surface sibyl of the extinguished

window onto the hidden place and the other time

       at the foot of the wall by the road patient without waiting

in the full moonlight of autumn at the hour when I was born

       you no longer go out like a flame at the sight of me

you are still warmer than the moonlight gleaming on you

       even now you are unharmed even now perfect

as you have always been now when your light paws are running

       on the breathless night on the bridge with one end I remember you

when I have heard you the soles of my feet have made answer

       when I have seen you I have waked and slipped from the calendars

from the creeds of difference and the contradictions

       that were my life and all the crumbling fabrications

as long as it lasted until something that we were

       had ended when you are no longer anything

let me catch sight of you again going over the wall

       and before the garden is extinct and the woods are figures

guttering on a screen let my words find their own

      places in the silence after the animals

                                                                              - W. S. Merwin