One Story Becomes Another
Note
by W.S. Merwin
Remember how the naked soul
comes to language and at once knows
loss and distance and believing
then for a time it will not run
with its old freedom
like a light innocent of measure
but will hearken to how
one story becomes another
and will try to hear where
they have emerged from
and where they are heading
as though they were its own legend
running before the words and beyond them
naked and never looking back
through the noise of questions
