It Is March

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It is March and black dust falls out of the books
Soon I will be gone
The tall spirit who lodged here has
Left already
On the avenues the colorless thread lies under
Old prices

When you look back there is always the past
Even when it has vanished
But when you look forward
With your dirty knuckles and the wingless
Bird on your shoulder
What can you write

The bitterness is still rising in the old mines
The fist is coming out of the egg
The thermometers out of the mouths of the corpses

At a certain height
The tails of the kites for a moment are
Covered with footsteps

Whatever I have to do has not yet begun


—W. S. Merwin

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whiskeyriver

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October

  

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I remember how I would say, “I will gather
These pieces together,
Any minute now I will make
A knife out of a cloud.”
Even then the days
Went leaving their wounds behind them,
But, “Monument,” I kept saying to the grave,
“I am still your legend.”

There was another time
When our hands met and the clocks struck
And we lived on the point of a needle, like angels.

I have seen the spider’s triumph
In the palm of my hand. Above
My grave, that thoroughfare,
There are words now that can bring
My eyes to my feet, tamed.
Beyond the trees wearing names that are not their own
The paths are growing like smoke.

The promises have gone,
Gone, gone, and they were here just now.
There is the sky where they laid their fish.
Soon it will be evening.


—W. S. Merwin
from The Moving Target

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variation on a theme

 

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Thank you my life long afternoon
late in this spring that has no age
my window above the river
for the woman you led me to
when it was time at last the words
coming to me out of mid-air
that carried me through the clear day
and come even now to find me

for old friends and echoes of them
those mistakes only I could make
homesickness that guides the plovers
from somewhere they had loved before
they knew they loved it to somewhere
they had loved before they saw it

thank you good body hand and eye
and the places and moments known
only to me revisiting
once more complete just as they are
and the morning stars I have seen
and the dogs who are guiding me


—W. S. Merwin

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all the flowers are forms of water

 

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BILL MOYERS: When we confirmed this meeting, you suggested that I read a poem in here called “Rain Light.” Why did you suggest that one?

W.S. MERWIN: I don’t know, I just — that seems to be a very close poem to me.

BILL MOYERS: Here it is:

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All day the stars watch from long ago

my mother said I am going now

when you are alone you will be all right

whether or not you know you will know

look at the old house in the dawn rain

all the flowers are forms of water

the sun reminds them through a white cloud

touches the patchwork spread on the hill

the washed colors of the afterlife

that lived there long before you were born

see how they wake without a question

even though the whole world is burning

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BILL MOYERS: “Even though the whole world is burning.” It is, isn’t it?

W.S. MERWIN: Yes. It is. It is burning, and we’re part of the burning. We’re part of the doing it. We’re part of the suffering it. We’re part of the watching it helplessly and ignorantly. And we know it’s happening. And it is just us. It is our lives. We’re burning. We’re, you know, we’re not the person we were yesterday. We’re not the person we were 20 years ago.

From a June 26, 2009 interview

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Every person is a half-open door / leading to a room for everyone. —Tomas Tranströmer

 

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This is a place where a door might be

here where I am standing
In the light outside all the walls

there would be a shadow here
all day long
and a door into it
where now there is me

and somebody would come and knock
on this air
long after I have gone
and there in front of me a life
would open

—W. S. Merwin

. . .

Tie your heart at night to mine, Love,
and we will defeat the darkness
like twin drums beating in the forest
against the heavy wall of wet leaves.
Night crossing: black coal of dream
that cuts the thread of earthly orbs
with the punctuality of a headlong train
that pulls cold stone and shadow endlessly.

Love, because of it, tie me to a purer movement,
to the grip on life that beats in your breast,
with the wings of a submerged swan,
So that our dream might reply
to the sky’s questioning stars
with one key, one door closed to shadow.

—Pablo Neruda

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For the Anniversary of My Death

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Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveller
Like the beam of a lightless star

Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what


—W. S. Merwin

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travelling together

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If we are separated I will
try to wait for you
on your side of things

your side of the wall and the water
and of the light moving at its own speed
even on leaves that we have seen
I will wait on one side

while a side is there


–W. S. Merwin

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quidnunc
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sonnet

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Where it begins will remain a question
for the time being at least which is to
say for this lifetime and there is no
other life that can be this one again
and where it goes after that only one
at a time is ever about to know
though we have it by heart as one and though
we remind each other on occasion

How often may the clarinet rehearse
alone the one solo before the one
time that is heard after all the others
telling the one thing that they all tell of
it is the sole performance of a life
come back I say to it over the waters 


–W. S. Merwin
Migration

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provision

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All morning with dry instruments
The field repeats the sound
Of rain
From memory
And in the wall
The dead increase their invisible honey
It is August
The flocks are beginning to form
I will take with me the emptiness of my hands
What you do not have you find everywhere

–W. S. Merwin

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thingsthatsing
merwinconservancy
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The Wild

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First sight of water through trees
glimpsed as a child
and the smell of the lake then
on the mountain
how long it has lasted
whole and unmoved and without words
the sound native to a great bell
never leaving it
paw in the air
guide
ancient curlew not recorded
flying at night into
the age of night
sail sailing in the dark
so the tone of it
still crosses the years
through death after death
and the burnings the departures
the absences
carrying its own
song inside it
of bright water

—W. S. Merwin
Migration

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dew light

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Now in the blessed days of more and less
when the news about time is that each day

there is less of it I know none of that
as I walk out through the early garden

only the day and I are here with no
before or after and the dew looks up
without a number or a present age


–W. S. Merwin

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air

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Naturally it is night.

Under the overturned lute with its

One string I am going my way

Which has a strange sound.

This way the dust, that way the dust.

I listen to both sides

But I keep right on.

I remember the leaves sitting in judgment

And then winter.

I remember the rain with its bundle of roads.

The rain taking all its roads.

Nowhere.

Young as I am, old as I am,

I forget tomorrow, the blind man.

I forget the life among the buried windows.

The eyes in the curtains.

The wall

Growing through the immortelles.

I forget silence

The owner of the smile.

This must be what I wanted to be doing,

Walking at night between the two deserts,

Singing.


–W. S. Merwin

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A Letter to Ruth Stone

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Now that you have caught sight
of the other side of darkness
the invisible side
so that you can tell
it is rising
first thing in the morning
and know it is there
all through the day
another sky
clear and unseen
has begun to loom
in your words
and another light is growing
out of their shadows
you can hear it
now you will be able
to envisage beyond
any words of mine
the color of these leaves
that you never saw
awake above the still valley
in the small hours
under the moon
three nights past the full
you know there was never
a name for that color


–W. S. Merwin
The Shadow Of Sirius

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fablesofthereconstruction
wait - what? 
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