So gradual in those summers was the going <br /> of the age it seemed that the long days setting out <br />when the stars faded over the mountains were not <br /> leaving us even as the birds woke in full song and the dew <br />glittered in the webs it appeared then that the clear morning <br /> opening into the sky was something of ours <br />to have and keep and that the brightness we could not touch <br /> and the air we could not hold had come to be there all the time <br />for us and would never be gone and that the axle <br /> we did not hear was not turning when the ancient car <br />coughed in the roofer's barn and rolled out echoing <br /> first thing into the lane and the only tractor <br />in the village rumbled and went into its rusty <br /> mutterings before heading out of its lean-to <br />into the cow pats and the shadow of the lime tree <br /> we did not see that the swallows flashing and the sparks <br />of their cries were fast in the spokes of the hollow <br /> wheel that was turning and turning us taking us <br />all away as one with the tires of the baker's van <br /> where the wheels of bread were stacked like days in calendars <br />coming and going all at once we did not hear <br /> the rim of the hour in whatever we were saying <br />or touching all day we thought it was there and would stay <br /> it was only as the afternoon lengthened on its <br />dial and the shadows reached out farther and farther <br /> from everything that we began to listen for what <br />might be escaping us and we heard high voices ringing <br /> the village at sundown calling their animals home <br />and then the bats after dark and the silence on its road<br /><br />William Stanley Merwin<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-speed-of-light/
