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 […]
When I Met My Muse by William Stafford
When I Met My Muse by William Stafford I glanced at her and took my glasses off–they were still singing. They buzzed like a locust on the coffee table and then ceased. Her voice belled forth, and the sunlight bent. I felt the ceiling arch, and knew that nails up there took a new grip […]
Waking at 3 a.m. by William Stafford
Waking at 3 a.m. by William Stafford Even in the cave of the night when you wake and are free and lonely, neglected by others, discarded, loved only by what doesn’t matter–even in that big room no one can see, you push with your eyes till forever comes in its twisted figure eight and lies […]
Traveling Through The Dark by William Stafford
Traveling Through The Dark by William Stafford Traveling through the dark I found a deer dead on the edge of the Wilson River road. It is usually best to roll them into the canyon: that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead. By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car […]
Thinking For Berky by William Stafford
Thinking For Berky by William Stafford In the late night listening from bed I have joined the ambulance or the patrol screaming toward some drama, the kind of end that Berky must have some day, if she isn’t dead. The wildest of all, her father and mother cruel, farming out there beyond the old stone […]
The Light By The Barn by William Stafford
The Light By The Barn by William Stafford The light by the barn that shines all night pales at dawn when a little breeze comes. A little breeze comes breathing the fields from their sleep and waking the slow windmill. The slow windmill sings the long day about anguish and loss to the chickens at […]
Security by William Stafford
Security by William Stafford Tomorrow will have an island. Before night I always find it. Then on to the next island. These places hidden in the day separate and come forward if you beckon. But you have to know they are there before they exist. Some time there will be a tomorrow without any island. […]
Returned To Say by William Stafford
Returned To Say by William Stafford When I face north a lost Cree on some new shore puts a moccasin down, rock in the light and noon for seeing, he in a hurry and I beside him It will be a long trip; he will be a new chief; we have drunk new water from […]
Remembering Mountain Men by William Stafford
Remembering Mountain Men by William Stafford I put my foot in cold water and hold it there: early mornings they had to wade through broken ice to find the traps in the deep channel with their hands, drag up the chains and the drowned beaver. The slow current of the life below tugs at me […]
Objector by William Stafford
Objector by William Stafford In line at lunch I cross my fork and spoon to ward off complicity–the ordered life our leaders have offered us. Thin as a knife, our chance to live depends on such a sign while others talk and The Pentagon from the moon is bouncing exact commands: “Forget your faith; be […]
Notice What This Poem Is Not Doing by William Stafford
Notice What This Poem Is Not Doing by William Stafford The light along the hills in the morning comes down slowly, naming the trees white, then coasting the ground for stones to nominate. Notice what this poem is not doing. A house, a house, a barn, the old quarry, where the river shrugs– how much […]
Lit Instructor by William Stafford
Lit Instructor by William Stafford Day after day up there beating my wings with all the softness truth requires I feel them shrug whenever I pause: they class my voice among tentative things, And they credit fact, force, battering. I dance my way toward the family of knowing, embracing stray error as a long-lost boy […]
Just Thinking by William Stafford
Just Thinking by William Stafford Got up on a cool morning. Leaned out a window. No cloud, no wind. Air that flowers held for awhile. Some dove somewhere. Been on probation most of my life. And the rest of my life been condemned. So these moments count for a lot–peace, you know. Let the bucket […]
William Stafford – William Stafford
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Graydigger’s Home by William Stafford
Graydigger’s Home by William Stafford Paw marks near one burrow show Graydigger at home, I bend low, from down there swivel my head, grasstop level–the world goes on forever, the mountains a bigger burrow, their snow like last winter. From a room inside the world even the strongest wind has a soft sound: a new […]
For My Young Friends Who Are Afraid by William Stafford
For My Young Friends Who Are Afraid by William Stafford There is a country to cross you will find in the corner of your eye, in the quick slip of your foot–air far down, a snap that might have caught. And maybe for you, for me, a high, passing voice that finds its way by […]
Atavism by William Stafford
Atavism by William Stafford 1 Sometimes in the open you look up where birds go by, or just nothing, and wait. A dim feeling comes you were like this once, there was air, and quiet; it was by a lake, or maybe a river you were alert as an otter and were suddenly born like […]
Ask Me by William Stafford
Ask Me by William Stafford Some time when the river is ice ask me mistakes I have made. Ask me whether what I have done is my life. Others have come in their slow way into my thought, and some have tried to help or to hurt: ask me what difference their strongest love or […]
Allegiances by William Stafford
Allegiances by William Stafford It is time for all the heroes to go home if they have any, time for all of us common ones to locate ourselves by the real things we live by. Far to the north, or indeed in any direction, strange mountains and creatures have always lurked- elves, goblins, trolls, and […]
Across Kansas by William Stafford
Across Kansas by William Stafford My family slept those level miles but like a bell rung deep till dawn I drove down an aisle of sound, nothing real but in the bell, past the town where I was born. Once you cross a land like that you own your face more: what the light struck […]
A Ritual To Read To Each Other by William Stafford
A Ritual To Read To Each Other by William Stafford If you don’t know the kind of person I am and I don’t know the kind of person you are a pattern that others made may prevail in the world and following the wrong god home we may miss our star. For there is many […]
Sonnet 127: In the old age black was not counted fair by William Shakespeare
In the old age black was not counted fair, Or if it were, it bore not beauty’s name; But now is black beauty’s successive heir, And beauty slandered with a bastard shame. For since each hand hath put on nature’s power, Fairing the foul with art’s false borrowed face, Sweet beauty hath no name no […]
Sonnet 126: O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power by William Shakespeare
O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power Dost hold Time’s fickle glass his fickle hour; Who hast by waning grown, and therein show’st Thy lovers withering, as thy sweet self grow’st. If Nature, sovereign mistress over wrack, As thou goest onwards, still will pluck thee back, She keeps thee to this purpose, that […]
Sonnet 125: Were’t aught to me I bore the canopy by William Shakespeare
Were’t aught to me I bore the canopy, With my extern the outward honouring, Or laid great bases for eternity, Which proves more short than waste or ruining? Have I not seen dwellers on form and favour Lose all, and more, by paying too much rent For compound sweet forgoing simple savour, Pitiful thrivers in […]
Sonnet 124: If my dear love were but the child of state by William Shakespeare
If my dear love were but the child of state, It might for Fortune’s bastard be unfathered, As subject to Time’s love or to Time’s hate, Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gathered. No, it was builded far from accident; It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls Under the blow of thralled discontent, […]
Sonnet 123: No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change by William Shakespeare
No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change. Thy pyramids built up with newer might To me are nothing novel, nothing strange; They are but dressings of a former sight. Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire What thou dost foist upon us that is old, And rather make them born to […]
Sonnet 122: Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain by William Shakespeare
Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain Full charactered with lasting memory, Which shall above that idle rank remain Beyond all date even to eternity— Or at the least, so long as brain and heart Have faculty by nature to subsist; Till each to razed oblivion yield his part Of thee, thy record never […]
Sonnet 121: Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed by William Shakespeare
‘Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed When not to be receives reproach of being, And the just pleasure lost, which is so deemed Not by our feeling, but by others’ seeing. For why should others’ false adulterate eyes Give salutation to my sportive blood? Or on my frailties why are frailer spies, Which […]
Sonnet 120: That you were once unkind befriends me now by William Shakespeare
That you were once unkind befriends me now, And for that sorrow, which I then did feel, Needs must I under my transgression bow, Unless my nerves were brass or hammered steel. For if you were by my unkindness shaken As I by yours, y’have passed a hell of time, And I, a tyrant, have […]
Sonnet 11: As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou grow’st by William Shakespeare
As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou grow’st In one of thine, from that which thou departest, And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow’st, Thou mayst call thine when thou from youth convertest. Herein lives wisdom, beauty, and increase; Without this folly, age, and cold decay, If all were minded so, the […]
Sonnet 119: What potions have I drunk of Siren tears by William Shakespeare
What potions have I drunk of Siren tears, Distilled from limbecks foul as hell within, Applying fears to hopes, and hopes to fears, Still losing when I saw my self to win! What wretched errors hath my heart committed, Whilst it hath thought it self so blessèd never! How have mine eyes out of their […]
Sonnet 118: Like as to make our appetite more keen by William Shakespeare
Like as to make our appetite more keen With eager compounds we our palate urge, As to prevent our maladies unseen, We sicken to shun sickness when we purge. Even so being full of your ne’er-cloying sweetness, To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding; And, sick of welfare, found a kind of meetness To […]
Sonnet 117: Accuse me thus: that I have scanted all by William Shakespeare
Accuse me thus: that I have scanted all Wherein I should your great deserts repay, Forgot upon your dearest love to call, Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day; That I have frequent been with unknown minds, And given to time your own dear-purchased right; That I have hoisted sail to all the […]
Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds by William Shakespeare
Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand’ring bark, Whose worth’s unknown, although […]