poet W S Merwin

For the Anniversary of My Death,” from 1967. It’s a poem that, like much of his best work, smuggles in overlapping layers of grave meaning:

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveller
Like the beam of a lightless star
Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/01/books/01garner.html?_r=1