W.S. Merwin was an American poet, translator and environmentalist, twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and a former U.S. Poet Laureate.
W.S. Merwin
Birds Waking
From Green With Beasts, 1955. Reprinted in The New Oxford Book of American Verse. Ed. Richard Ellman. OUP, 1976.
I went out at daybreak and stood on Primrose Hill.
It was April: a white haze over the hills of Surrey
Over the green haze of the hills above the dark green
Of the park trees, and over it all the light came up clear,
The sky like deep porcelain paling and paling,
With everywhere under it the faces of the buildings
Where the city slept, gleaming white and quiet,
St Paul's and the water tower taking the gentle gold
And from the hill chestnuts and park trees
There was such a clamour rose as the birds woke,
Such uncontainable tempest of whirled
Singing flung upward and upward into the new light...