Yesterday by 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 […]
Wish by W. S. Merwin
Wish by W. S. Merwin The star in my Hand is falling All the uniforms know what’s no use May I bow to Necessity not To her hirelings ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. Poetry Monster — the ultimate repository of world poetry. […]
Whenever I Go There by W. S. Merwin
Whenever I Go There by W. S. Merwin Whenever I go there everything is changed The stamps on the bandages the titles Of the professors of water The portrait of Glare the reasons for The white mourning In new rocks new insects are sitting With the lights off And once more I remember that the […]
When You Go Away by W. S. Merwin
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 […]
Vehicles by W. S. Merwin
Vehicles by W. S. Merwin This is a place on the way after the distances can no longer be kept straight here in this dark corner of the barn a mound of wheels has convened along raveling courses to stop in a single moment and lie down as still as the chariots of the Pharaohs […]
Unknown Bird by W. S. Merwin
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 […]
The Speed Of Light by W. S. Merwin
The Speed Of Light by W. S. Merwin So gradual in those summers was the going of the age it seemed that the long days setting out when the stars faded over the mountains were not leaving us even as the birds woke in full song and the dew glittered in the webs it appeared […]
The Source by W. S. Merwin
The Source by W. S. Merwin There in the fringe of trees between the upper field and the edge of the one below it that runs above the valley one time I heard in the early days of summer the clear ringing six notes that I knew were the opening of the Fingal’s Cave Overture […]
The Ships Are Made Ready In Silence by W. S. Merwin
The Ships Are Made Ready In Silence by W. S. Merwin Moored to the same ring: The hour, the darkness and I, Our compasses hooded like falcons. Now the memory of you comes aching in With a wash of broken bits which never left port In which once we planned voyages, They come knocking like […]
The River Of Bees by W. S. Merwin
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 […]
The Burnt Child by W. S. Merwin
The Burnt Child by W. S. Merwin Matches among other things that were not allowed never would be lying high in a cool blue box that opened in other hands and there they all were bodies clean and smooth blue heads white crowns white sandpaper on the sides of the box scoring fire after fire […]
Term by W. S. Merwin
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 […]
Some Last Questions by W. S. Merwin
Some Last Questions by W. S. Merwin What is the head A. Ash What are the eyes A. The wells have fallen in and have Inhabitants What are the feet A. Thumbs left after the auction No what are the feet A. Under them the impossible road is moving Down which the broken necked mice […]
One of the Lives by W. S. Merwin
One of the Lives by W. S. Merwin If I had not met the red-haired boy whose father had broken a leg parachuting into Provence to join the resistance in the final stage of the war and so had been killed there as the Germans were moving north out of Italy and if the friend […]
On the Subject of Poetry by W. S. Merwin
On the Subject of Poetry by W. S. Merwin I do not understand the world, Father. By the millpond at the end of the garden There is a man who slouches listening To the wheel revolving in the stream, only There is no wheel there to revolve. He sits in the end of March, but […]
My Friends by W. S. Merwin
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 […]
Language by W. S. Merwin
Language by W. S. Merwin Certain words now in our knowledge we will not use again, and we will never forget them. We need them. Like the back of the picture. Like our marrow, and the color in our veins. We shine the lantern of our sleep on them, to make sure, and there they […]
It Is March by W. S. Merwin
It Is March by W. S. Merwin 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 […]
William Stanley Merwin – William Stanley Merwin
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Green Fields by W. S. Merwin
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 […]
For The Anniversary Of My Death by W. S. Merwin
For The Anniversary Of My Death by W. S. Merwin 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 in a […]
For A Coming Extinction by W. S. Merwin
For A Coming Extinction by W. S. Merwin Gray whale Now that we are sinding you to The End That great god Tell him That we who follow you invented forgiveness And forgive nothing I write as though you could understand And I could say it One must always pretend something Among the dying When […]