"roofer" poems - Hello Poetry

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

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W. S. Merwin

The Speed Of Light

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