These muddy waters measuring the light
of that same moon, still round and rolling cold
as once it rolled in autumns dark and bright
when you upon this bank grew up and old-

these waters whisper to the swans that go
and glide across the current to my side;
they whisper you are living even though
the steeple yonder says that you have died.

I know it so. This river overflows
as surely as your Cleopatra's Nile
buoys up her fecund death, as surely grows
Hermione to life all this long while.

When her still statue stirred and stepped in grace,
you after time came swimming to this place.

Paul J. Willis is a professor of English at Westmont College. With David Starkey, he is co-editor of In a Fine Frenzy: Poets Respond to Shakespeare, forthcoming from the University of Iowa Press in spring 2005.

Copyright © 2004 by the author or Christianity Today/Books & Culture magazine.
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