The Prediction

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That night the moon drifted over the pond, 
turning the water to milk, and under 
the boughs of the trees, the blue trees, 
a young woman walked, and for an instant

the future came to her:
rain falling on her husband’s grave, rain falling 
on the lawns of her children, her own mouth
filling with cold air, strangers moving into her house,

a man in her room writing a poem, the moon drifting into it, 
a woman strolling under its trees, thinking of death,
thinking of him thinking of her, and the wind rising
and taking the moon and leaving the paper dark.

© Mark Strand