Moored to the same ring: <br />The hour, the darkness and I, <br />Our compasses hooded like falcons. <br /> <br />Now the memory of you comes aching in <br />With a wash of broken bits which never left port <br />In which once we planned voyages, <br />They come knocking like hearts asking: <br />What departures on this tide? <br /> <br />Breath of land, warm breath, <br />You tighten the cold around the navel, <br />Though all shores but the first have been foreign, <br />And the first was not home until left behind. <br /> <br />Our choice is ours but we have not made it, <br />Containing as it does, our destination <br />Circled with loss as with coral, and <br />A destination only until attained. <br /> <br />I have left you my hope to remember me by, <br />Though now there is little resemblance. <br />At this moment I could believe in no change, <br />The mast perpetually <br />Vacillating between the same constellations, <br />The night never withdrawing its dark virtue <br />>From the harbor shaped as a heart, <br />The sea pulsing as a heart, <br />The sky vaulted as a heart, <br />Where I know the light will shatter like a cry <br />Above a discovery: <br />'Emptiness. <br />Emptiness! Look!' <br />Look. This is the morning.<br /><br />William Stanley Merwin<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-ships-are-made-ready-in-silence/
