the secret name

To be lulled to sleep by the wind blowing outside, tenderly shaking the house to its foundations. Both stranger and friend indeed. The ever-gentle reminder.

*     *     *

The terrible, lightest wind in the world
Blows from word to word, from ear
To ear, from name to name, from secret
Name to secret name. You maybe
Did not know you had another
Sound and sign signifying you.


W. S. Graham, from Implements in Their Places in Collected Poems 1942-1977 (London: Faber, 1979), p. 233.