Hearing

Back when it took all day to come up

from the curving broad ponds on the plains

where the green-winged jaçanas ran on the lily pads

easing past tracks at the mouths of gorges

crossing villages silted in hollows

in the foothills

each with its lime-washed church by the baked square

of red earth and its

talkers eating fruit under trees

turning a corner and catching

sight at last of inky forests far above

steep as faces

with the clouds stroking them and the glimmering

airy valleys opening out of them

waterfalls still roared from the folds

of the mountain

white and thundering and spray drifted

around us swirling into the broad leaves

and the waiting boughs

once I took a tin cup and climbed

the sluiced rocks and mossy branches beside

one of the high falls

looking up step by step into

the green sky from which rain was falling

when I looked back from a ledge there were only

dripping leaves below me

and flowers

beside me the hissing

cataract plunged into the trees

holding on I moved closer

left foot on a rock in the water

right foot on a rock in deeper water

at the edge of the fall

then from under the weight of my right foot

came a voice like a small bell singing

over and over one clear treble

syllable

I could feel it move

I could feel it ring in my foot in my skin

everywhere

in my ears in my hair

I could feel it in my tongue and in the hand

holding the cup

as long as I stood there it went on

without changing

when I moved the cup

still it went on

when I filled the cup

in the falling column

still it went on

when I drank it rang in my eyes

through the thunder curtain

when I filled the cup again

when I raised my foot

still it went on

and all the way down

from wet rock to wet rock

green branch to green branch

it came with me

until I stood

looking up and we drank

the light water

and when we went on we could

still hear the sound

as far as the next turn on the way over

Copyright Credit: W. S. Merwin, “Hearing” from Flower & Hand: Poems 1977-1983 (Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 1997). Copyright © 1997 by W. S. Merwin. Reprinted with the permission of The Wylie Agency, Inc.

Source: Opening the Hand (Copper Canyon Press, 1983)