This is a poem called Merlin after Merlin
the magician inspired by TH White's great book
The Once and Future King.
And what struck me about the figure of Merlin
is the fact that he's a man who moves backwards through time
beginning as an old man and gradually growing
younger, forgetting his life as it happens,
remembering what will happen only until it happens,
and then it's lost forever.
Merlin.
The grass rose like a dream around him.
The names divided in the story he had chosen.
Some are disguises, others the beginnings of themselves.
Only a few go all the way.
Another story began.
Clear and full of silence, he grew younger.
When they move into each other, you cannot be sure where you
are or what is supposed to happen next.
The pale stars tilted above him like a chart.
Only what is remembered is real.
Something like singing met him by the water.
In the shape of no song he could remember.
When you hear one, it is yours.
The story divided another began.
An open window, a cave of wind, the long grass
between the forest and those fields like a dream of sleep
inside a dream, like the shape of dark water unraveling
into the Earth, the song covered him with the words
that it knew.