Here late into September I can sit with the windows of the stone room swung open to the plum branches still green above the two fields bare now fresh-plowed under the walnuts and watch the screen of ash trees and the river below them
and listen to the hawk's cry over the misted valley beyond the shoulder of woods and to lambs in a pasture on the ***** and a chaffinch somewhere down in the sloe hedge and silence from the village behind me and from the years
and can hear the light rain come the note of each drop playing into the stone by the sill I come slowly to hearing then all at once too quickly for surprise I hear something and think I remember it and will know it afterward
in a few days I will be a year older one more year a year farther and nearer and with no sound from there on mute as the native country that was never there again now I hear walnuts falling in the country I came to