Hearing Eye

No 1 in the Torriano Poetry Pamphlet Series

Sound

In a rough, windy night
I have been listening
To the movements of the wind
And forming a kind of poem
Without knowing its language.

Ruach, I say, using
The old biblical word
For the wind, the breath
Or spirit of God
Moving after creation.

But nothing follows:
No other words
Cross the darkness outside.
There is only ruach,
The word for the sound of the wind.

Fewer than a hundred of his poems and translations had been published in book form in his lifetime, but dozens of unpublished poems were found among his papers. As a result a collected edition was published in 1996 which places him among the major English poets of the second half of the century.