By the Time You Read This

--Paul Muldoon

By the time you read this I’ll be gone

for a newspaper and quart of milk

never to return, a half-mowed lawn

leading to me as a scroll of silk

once led to the mulberry silkworm.

By the time you read this I’ll be gone

AWOL in spite of the fact, in terms

of domesticity, I’ve outshone

even the heedful trumpeter swan

that spends five weeks constructing a nest.

By the time you read this I’ll be gone

less because of some profound unrest

than my fascination with the Cree

and the sandhills of Saskatchewan

into which windswept immensity,

by the time you read this, I’ll be long gone.