The Vixen Quotes

“all I did not know went on beginning around me
I had thought it would come later but it had been waiting”
― W.S. Merwin, The Vixen: Poems

“I watched the shadow climbing the fields and I turned
uphill to come to the top gate and the last barn
the sun still in the day and my shadow going on
out into the upland and I saw they were milking
it was that hour and it seemed all my friends were there
we greeted each other and we walked back out to the gate
talking and saw the last light and our shadows gesturing
far out along the ridge until the darkness gathered them
and we went on standing here believing there were other words
we stood here talking about our lives in the autumn”
― W.S. Merwin, The Vixen: Poems

“Once I came back to the leaves just as they were falling
into the rattling of magpies and the waving flights
through treetops beyond the long field tawny with stubble
a scatter of sheep wandered there circling slowly
as a galaxy ferrying the gray lights that were theirs
wading into their shadows with the stalks whispering
under them and the day shining out of the straw”
― W.S. Merwin, The Vixen: Poems

“There are the yellow beads of the stonecrops and the twisted flags
of dried irises knuckled into the hollows
of moss and rubbly limestone on the waves of the low wall
the ivy has climbed along them where the weasel ran
the light has kindled to gold the late leaves of the cherry tree
over the lane by the house chimney there is the roof
and the window looking out over the garden
summer and winter there is the field below the house
there is the broad valley far below them all with the curves
of the river a strand of sky threaded through it
and the notes of bells rising out of it faint as smoke
and there beyond the valley above the rim of the wall
the line of mountains I recognize like a line of writing
that has come back when I had thought it was forgotten”
― W.S. Merwin, The Vixen: Poems

“Once again I was there and once again I was leaving
and again it seemed as though nothing had changed
even while it was all changing but this time
was a time of ending this time the long marriage was over
the orbits were flying apart it was autumn again
sunlight tawny in the fields where the shadows
each day grew longer and the still afternoons
ripened the distance until the sun went down
across the valley and the full moon rose out of the trees
it was the time of year when I was born and that evening
I went to see friends for the last time and came back
after midnight along the road white with the moon
I was crossing the bars of shadow and seeing ahead of me
the wide silent valley full of silver light”
― W.S. Merwin, The Vixen: Poems

“What I thought I had left I kept finding again
but when I went looking for what I thought I remembered
as anyone could have foretold it was not there
when I went away looking for what I had to do
I found that I was living where I was a stranger
but when I retraced my steps the familiar vision”
― W.S. Merwin, The Vixen: Poems