W. S. MERWIN
“To the Unlikely Event”

You have been evoked so often
like some relative in office
whom we have heard of by name
all these years but have never met

you inhabit a kind of fame
a void without time or senses
beyond anything said of you
so that doubtless you do not hear
the recurring inadequate
references to you that rise
from another age rehearsing
wrong images or none at all

and whenever you may arrive
at last for a visit you come
in pure innocence and too late
to be recognized once you are
here sudden drop in the dials
in the light or the affections
windfall or surprise legacy

but once you come you do not go

how can we ever address you
in your unlikelihood boundless
indifference abroad in your
uncharted self to which only
random syllables find the way
and to what words can we entrust
our groundless hope saying there there
to them how unlikely you sound
already as though this might be
the mission you were conceived for
it could be what you always meant

and the hope itself when we turn
at the last minute to put it
into words what is there to say
that seems even possible
                              may
it go on just as it is may
that day never come may it be
spring in the morning together
and without end
                              how unlikely

it sounds when we come to say it

it does not help much to recall
how unlikely it is that we
turned up here with the beginning
strewn around us of which we know
nothing hear nothing remember
only the moment before us
which we believe as it happens
when it appears to be likely

oh be unlikely forever