Yesterday -- 15 Poems of W. S. Merwin

Yesterday
By W. S. Merwin

My friend says I was not a good son

you understand

I say yes I understand



he says I did not go

to see my parents very often you know

and I say yes I know



even when I was living in the same city he says

maybe I would go there once

a month or maybe even less

I say oh yes



he says the last time I went to see my father

I say the last time I saw my father



he says the last time I saw my father

he was asking me about my life

how I was making out and he

went into the next room

to get something to give me



oh I say

feeling again the cold

of my father's hand the last time

he says and my father turned

in the doorway and saw me

look at my wristwatch and he

said you know I would like you to stay

and talk with me



oh yes I say



but if you are busy he said

I don't want you to feel that you

have to

just because I'm here



I say nothing



he says my father

said maybe

you have important work you are doing

or maybe you should be seeing

somebody I don't want to keep you



I look out the window

my friend is older than I am

he says and I told my father it was so

and I got up and left him then

you know



though there was nowhere I had to go

and nothing I had to do



-----------

BEFORE THE FLOOD

By W. S. Merwin

Why did he promise me
that we would build ourselves
an ark all by ourselves
out in back of the house
on New York Avenue
in Union City New Jersey
to the singing of the streetcars
after the story
of Noah whom nobody
believed about the waters
that would rise over everything
when I told my father
I wanted us to build
an ark of our own there
in the back yard under
the kitchen could we do that
he told me that we could
I want to I said and will we
he promised me that we would
why did he promise that
I wanted us to start then
nobody will believe us
I said that we are building
an ark because the rains
are coming and that was true
nobody ever believed
we would build an ark there
nobody would believe
that the waters were coming

-------------------------

Caesar

By W. S. Merwin

 






My shoes are almost dead

And as I wait at the doors of ice

I hear the cry go up for him Caesar Caesar



But when I look out the window I see only the flatlands

And the slow vanishing of the windmills

The centuries draining the deep fields



Yet this is still my country

The thug on duty says What would you change

He looks at his watch he lifts

Emptiness out of the vases

And holds it up to examine

So it is evening

With the rain starting to fall forever



One by one he calls night out of the teeth

And at last I take up

My duty



Wheeling the president past banks of flowers

Past the feet of empty stairs

Hoping he's dead




-------------

After The Alphabets



By W. S. Merwin





I am trying to decipher the language of insects

they are the tongues of the future

their vocabularies describe buildings as food

they can instruct of dark water and the veins of trees

they can convey what they do not know

and what is known at a distance

and what nobody knows

they have terms for making music with the legs

they can recount changing in a sleep like death

they can sing with wings

the speakers are their own meaning in a grammar without horizons

they are wholly articulate

they are never important they are everything



-----------------



Search Party




By W. S. Merwin






By now I know most of the faces

that will appear beside me as

long as there are still images

I know at last what I would choose

the next time if there ever was

a time again I know the days

that open in the dark like this

I do not know where Maoli is



I know the summer surfaces

of bodies and the tips of voices

like stars out of their distances

and where the music turns to noise

I know the bargains in the news

rules whole languages formulas

wisdom that I will never use

I do not know where Maoli is



I know whatever one may lose

somebody will be there who says

what it will be all right to miss

and what is verging on excess

I know the shadows of the house

routes that lead out to no traces

many of his empty places

I do not know where Maoli is



You that see now with your own eyes

all that there is as you suppose

though I could stare through broken glass

and show you where the morning goes

though I could follow to their close

the sparks of an exploding species

and see where the world ends in ice

I would not know where Maoli is




---------------------




To Luck




By W. S. Merwin






In the cards and at the bend in the road

we never saw you

in the womb and in the crossfire

in the numbers

whatever you had your hand in

which was everything

we were told never to put

our faith in you

to bow to you humbly after all

because in the end there was nothing

else we could do

but not to believe in you



still we might coax you with pebbles

kept warm in the hand

or coins or the relics

of vanished animals

observances rituals

not binding upon you

who make no promises

we might do such things only

not to neglect you

and risk your disfavor

oh you who are never the same

who are secret as the day when it comes

you whom we explain

as often as we can

without understanding




------------------




Low Fields and Light




By W. S. Merwin






I think it is in Virginia, that place

That lies across the eye of my mind now

Like a gray blade set to the moon's roundness,

Like a plain of glass touching all there is.



The flat fields run out to the sea there.

There is no sand, no line. It is autumn.

The bare fields, dark between fences, run

Out to the idle gleam of the flat water.



And the fences go on out, sinking slowly,

With a cow-bird half-way, on a stunted post, watching

How the light slides through them easy as weeds

Or wind, slides over them away out near the sky.



Because even a bird can remember

The fields that were there before the slow

Spread and wash of the edging line crawled

There and covered them, a little more each year.



My father never ploughed there, nor my mother

Waited, and never knowingly I stood there

Hearing the seepage slow as growth, nor knew

When the taste of salt took over the ground.



But you would think the fields were something

To me, so long I stare out, looking

For their shapes or shadows through the matted gleam, seeing

Neither what is nor what was, but the flat light rising. 




--------------------




When You Go Away




By W. S. Merwin






When you go away the wind clicks around to the north

The painters work all day but at sundown the paint falls

Showing the black walls

The clock goes back to striking the same hour

That has no place in the years



And at night wrapped in the bed of ashes

In one breath I wake

It is the time when the beards of the dead get their growth

I remember that I am falling

That I am the reason

And that my words are the garment of what I shall never be

Like the tucked sleeve of a one-armed boy




-------------------




The Broken




By W. S. Merwin






The spiders started out to go with the wind on its pilgrimage. At that time

They were honored among the invisibles -- more sensitive than glass, lighter

than water, purer than ice. Even the lighting spoke well of them, and it

seemed as though they could go anywhere. But as they were traveling

between cold and heat, cracks appeared in them, appeared in their limbs,

and they stopped, it seemed they had to stop, had to leave the company of

the wind for a while and stay in one place until they got better, moving

carefully, hiding, trusting to nothing. It was not long before they gave up

trying to become whole again, and instead undertook to mend the air.

Neither life nor death, they said, would slip through it any more.

	After that they were numbered among the dust -- makers of ghosts.

	The wind never missed them. There were still the clouds.




---------------




The River of Bees


By W. S. Merwin






In a dream I returned to the river of bees

Five orange trees by the bridge and

Beside two mills my house

Into whose courtyard a blind man followed

The goats and stood singing

Of what was older



Soon it will be fifteen years



He was old he will have fallen into his eyes



I took my eyes

A long way to the calendars

Room after room asking how shall I live



One of the ends is made of streets

One man processions carry through it

Empty bottles their

Image of hope

It was offered to me by name



Once once and once

In the same city I was born

Asking what shall I say



He will have fallen into his mouth

Men think they are better than grass



I return to his voice rising like a forkful of hay



He was old he is not real nothing is real

Nor the noise of death drawing water



We are the echo of the future



On the door it says what to do to survive

But we were not born to survive

Only to live




--------------




My Friends



By W. S. Merwin





My friends without shields walk on the target



It is late the windows are breaking



My friends without shoes leave

What they love

Grief moves among them as a fire among

Its bells

My friends without clocks turn

On the dial they turn

They part



My friends with names like gloves set out

Bare handed as they have lived

And nobody knows them

It is they that lay the wreaths at the milestones it is their

Cups that are found at the wells

And are then chained up



My friends without feet sit by the wall

Nodding to the lame orchestra

Brotherhood it says on the decorations

My friend without eyes sits in the rain smiling

With a nest of salt in his hand



My friends without fathers or houses hear

Doors opening in the darkness

Whose halls announce



Behold the smoke has come home



My friends and I have in common

The present a wax bell in a wax belfry

This message telling of

Metals this

Hunger for the sake of hunger this owl in the heart

And these hands one

For asking one for applause



My friends with nothing leave it behind

In a box

My friends without keys go out from the jails it is night

They take the same road they miss

Each other they invent the same banner in the dark

They ask their way only of sentries too proud to breathe



At dawn the stars on their flag will vanish



The water will turn up their footprints and the day will rise

Like a monument to my

Friends the forgotten



-------------


GREEN FIELDS



By W. S. Merwin
 




By this part of the century few are left who believe



    in the animals for they are not there in the carved parts



of them served on plates and the pleas from the slatted trucks



    are sounds of shadows that possess no future



there is still game for the pleasure of killing



    and there are pets for the children but the lives that followed



courses of their own other than ours and older



    have been migrating before us some are already



far on the way and yet Peter with his gaunt cheeks



    and point of white beard the face of an aged Lawrence



Peter who had lived on from another time and country



    and who had seen so many things set out and vanish



still believed in heaven and said he had never once



    doubted it since his childhood on the farm in the days



of the horses he had not doubted it in the worst



    times of the Great War and afterward and he had come



to what he took to be a kind of earthly



    model of it as he wandered south in his sixties



by that time speaking the language well enough



    for them to make him out he took the smallest roads



into a world he thought was a thing of the past



    with wildflowers he scarcely remembered and neighbors



working together scything the morning meadows



    turning the hay before the noon meal bringing it in



by milking time husbandry and abundance



    all the virtues he admired and their reward bounteous



in the eyes of a foreigner and there he remained



    for the rest of his days seeing what he wanted to see



until the winter when he could no longer fork



    the earth in his garden and then he gave away



his house land everything and committed himself



    to a home to die in an old chateau where he lingered



for some time surrounded by those who had lost



    the use of body or mind and as he lay there he told me



that the wall by his bed opened almost every day



    and he saw what was really there and it was eternal life



as he recognized at once when he saw the gardens



    he had made and the green fields where he had been



a child and his mother was standing there then the wall would close



    and around him again were the last days of the world


------------



UNKNOWN BIRD



By W. S. Merwin



Out of the dry days



through the dusty leaves



far across the valley



those few notes never



heard here before







one fluted phrase



floating over its



wandering secret



all at once wells up



somewhere else







and is gone before it



goes on fallen into



its own echo leaving



a hollow through the air



that is dry as before







where is it from



hardly anyone



seems to have noticed it



so far but who now



would have been listening







it is not native here



that may be the one



thing we are sure of



it came from somewhere



else perhaps alone







so keeps on calling for



no one who is here



hoping to be heard



by another of its own



unlikely origin







trying once more the same few



notes that began the song



of an oriole last heard



years ago in another



existence there







it goes again tell



no one it is here



foreign as we are



who are filling the days



with a sound of our own



----------------------







TERM

By W. S. Merwin
 

At the last minute a word is waiting

not heard that way before and not to be

repeated or ever be remembered

one that always had been a household word

used in speaking of the ordinary

everyday recurrences of living

not newly chosen or long considered

or a matter for comment afterward

who would ever have thought it was the one

saying itself from the beginning through

all its uses and circumstances to

utter at last that meaning of its own

for which it had long been the only word

though it seems now that any word would do



------------------------





ANY TIME

By W. S. Merwin



How long ago the day is

when at last I look at it

with the time it has taken

to be there still in it

now in the transparent light

with the flight in the voices

the beginning in the leaves

everything I remember

and before it before me

present at the speed of light

in the distance that I am

who keep reaching out to it

seeing all the time faster

where it has never stirred from

before there is anything

the darkness thinking the light





 
A Brief Biography of the Poet









In a career spanning five decades, W.S. Merwin, poet, translator, and environmental activist, has become one of the most widely read — and imitated — poets in America. The son of a Presbyterian minister, for whom he began writing hymns at the age of five, Merwin went to Europe as a young man and developed a love of languages that led to work as a literary translator. Over the years, his poetic voice has moved from the more formal and medieval—influenced somewhat by Robert Graves and the medieval poetry he was then translating — to a more distinctly American voice, following his two years in Boston where he got to know Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Adrienne Rich, and Donald Hall, all of whom were breaking out of the rhetoric of the 1950s. W.S. Merwin’s recent poetry is perhaps his most personal, arising from his deeply held beliefs. He is not only profoundly anti-imperialist, pacifist, and environmentalist, but also possessed by an intimate feeling for landscape and language and the ways in which land and language interflow. His latest poems are densely imagistic, dream-like, and full of praise for the natural world.



His first book, A Mask for Janus, was published in 1952 in the Yale Younger Poets series — chosen by W.H. Auden. His book of poems The Carrier of Ladders was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1970. His other books include The Drunk in the Furnace, The Moving Target, The Lice, Flower & Hand, The Compass Flower, Feathers from the Hill, Opening the Hand, The Rain in the Trees, Travels, The Vixen, The Lost Upland, Unframed Originals, and The Folding Cliffs. His recent works include the collections of poems The River Sound and The Pupil, as well as a new translation of Dante’s Purgatorio and his critically-lauded translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. He has also published a book of prose entitled The Mays of Ventador, as part of the National Geographic Directions series. Recent reissues of his books include The First Four Books of Poems, and his translations of Jean Follain’s poems Transparence of the World, and Antonio Porchia’s Voices. In 2004, Shoemaker & Hoard released The Ends of the Earth, a gathering of essays expressing the breadth of W.S. Merwin’s fascination with the natural world and the explorers who have journeyed through it; this work is Merwin’s first new prose collection in more than a decade. William Merwin’s selected poems collection will be published in spring 2005 by Copper Canyon Press and is entitled Migration: Selected Poems 1951-2001. In the fall of 2005 his next book of new poems, Present Company, will also be published by Copper Canyon Press.



In 1999, W.S. Merwin was named Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress for a jointly-held position along with poets Rita Dove and Louise Glück. Included in his numerous awards are the Pulitzer Prize, the Tanning Prize, the Bollingen Prize, and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.



***



“The intentions of Merwin’s poetry are as broad as the biosphere yet as intimate as a whisper. He conveys in the sweet simplicity of grounded language a sense of the self where it belongs, floating between heaven, earth, and the underground.” — The Atlantic Monthly



Biogrpahy Source: http://www.barclayagency.com/merwin.html