Source of book: I own this
I regret that I have been unable to acquire the Library of America edition of the complete Merwin, but it has become unobtanium. Fortunately paperback editions of some of his collections are still available. This is one of them. You can also find many of the poems at the Merwin Conservancy if you like.
One of the benefits of our interconnected online world, for all its disadvantages, is the chance to connect with kindred spirits across the world. In one of those cases, a friend who moved from where I live to Florida met another person, who I met online through my friend. I then met another friend from that person, and we ended up getting together in person for hiking and backpacking, which we have done here and there over the last few years. And now, both are part of a poetry group we have started, complete with zoom meetings.
One of the great things about this meeting has been being introduced to a number of modern poets that I have come to love. One of those is W. S. Merwin.
My own poetry journey started very young, with my love for Emily Dickinson, Christina Rossetti, and Robert Frost. I also read quite a few of the other poets from the 19th Century and prior, because these show up in old anthologies that you can get at a thrift store for pennies.
Discovering the more modern poets came later for me, and friends have been helpful in that discovery process. There is so much out there, and only one lifetime to read.
Merwin was, like many of my favorite moderns, an ecologist as well as a poet. There is a strong connection between the poetic temperament and a closeness to our planet and the living biosphere.
The Shadow of Sirius is one of his later books, from 2008. It won the Pulitzer.
The poems are modern in form, with no punctuation, little capitalization, and mostly free forms. There are a few that lean in the direction of tradition, but are not quite there. They don’t feel particularly experimental, however, just a familiar modern verse form that relies on the skill of the poet in arranging meaning and sounds to create the magic of poetry.
Here are the poems that particularly spoke to me from this collection.
The Nomad Flute
You that sang to me once sing to me now
let me hear your long lifted note
survive with me
the star is fading
I can think farther than that but I forget
do you hear me
do you still hear me
does your air
remember you
o breath of morning
night song morning song
I have with me
all that I do not know
I have lost none of it
but I know better now
than to ask you
where you learned that music
where any of it came from
once there were lions in China
I will listen until the flute stops
and the light is old again
Any of us who are wanderers and filled with wonder at the natural world will enjoy this and many of the other poems in this collection.
This next one is a definite favorite. As a writer and thinker, I am fascinated by how words work, and how they communicate meaning, yet always imperfectly.
Note
Remember how the naked soul
comes to language and at once knows
loss and distance and believing
then for a time it will not run
with its old freedom
like a light innocent of measure
but will hearken to how
one story becomes another
and will try to tell where
they have emerged from
and where they are heading
as though they were its own legend
running before the words and beyond them
naked and never looking back
through the noise of questions
Here is another one on that theme.
From the Start
Who did I think was listening
when I wrote down the words
in pencil at the beginning
words for singing
to music I did not know
and people I did not know
would read them and stand to sing them
already knowing them
while they sing they have no name
Do you collect stones? Do you ever wander on the beach and pick up small smooth ones that catch your fancy? I certainly do. This next poem may resonate.
Lament for a Stone
The bay where I found you faced the long light
of the west glowing under the could sky
there Columba as the story goes looked
back and could not see Ireland any more
therefore he could stay he made up his mind
in that slur of the sea on the shingle
shaped in a fan around the broad crescent
formed all of green pebbles found nowhere else
flecked with red held in blue depths and polished
smooth as water by rolling like water
along each other rocking as they were
rocking at his feet it is said that they
are proof against drowning and I saw you
had the shape of the long heart of a bird
and when I took you in my palm we flew
through the years hearing them rush under us
where have you flown now leaving me to hear
that sound alone without you in my hand
I am also given to walking at night on moonless nights - one particular hike at Pinnacles National Park is a treasured memory. I find that even the stars cast shadows.
Night with No Moon
Now you are darker than I can believe
it is not wisdom that I have come to
with its denials and pure promises
but this absence that I cannot set down
still hearing when there is nothing to hear
reaching into the blindness that was there
thinking to walk in the dark together
This next one feels very personal, and it reminds me of my feelings for my beloved. The form of this one is reminiscent of a Pantoum or even a Villanelle, although it is not so structured as either.
Good Night
Sleep softly my old love
my beauty in the dark
night is a dream we have
as you know as you know
night is a dream you know
an old love in the dark
around you as you go
without end as you know
in the night where you go
sleep softly my old love
without end in the dark
in the love that you know
I find that poems with the theme of journeys, connection, longing, are ones I highlighted. Here is another.
Into the Cloud
What do you have with you
now my small traveler
suddenly on the way
and all at once so far
on legs that never were
up to the life that you
led them and breathing with
the shortness breath comes to
my endless company
when you could come to me
you would stay close to me
until the day was done
o closest to my breath
if you are able to
please wait a while longer
on that side of the cloud
Here is another that was so good, I shared it on Facebook. A real gem.
Worn Words
The late poems are the ones
I turn to first now
following a hope that keeps
beckoning me
waiting somewhere in the lines
almost in plain sight
it is the late poems
that are made of words
that have come the whole way
they have been there
I do often find that the later poems written by my favorite poets are often the ones I return to. Thomas Hardy’s Winter Words, for example, is so good.
Another one about words and meaning and the music of language
The Long and the Short of It
As long as we can believe anything
we believe in measure
we do it with the first breath we take
and the first sound we make
it is in each word we learn
and in each of them it means
what will come again and when
it is there in meal and in moon
and in meaning it is the meaning
it is the firmament and the furrow
turning at the end of the field
and the verse turning with its breath
it is in memory that keeps telling us
some of the old story about us
And another, which combines the love of words and the love of nature.
What the Bridges Hear
Even the right words if ever
we come to them tell of something
the words never knew
celestia for starlight
or starlight for starlight
so at this moment there may be words
somewhere among the nebulae
for the two bridges cross the wide
rock-strewn river
part way around the bend from each other
in the winter sunlight
late in the afternoon more than half
a century ago with the sound
of the water rushing under them
and passing between them unvarying
and inaudible it is still there
so is the late sunlight
of that winter afternoon
although the winter has vanished
and the bridges are still reaching across
the wide sound of being there
This is another picture of a particular time, place, and mood that really resonates.
Cold Spring Morning
At times it has seemed that when
I first came here it was an old self
I recognized in the silent walls
and the river far below
but the self has no age
as I knew even then and had known
for longer than I could remember
as the sky has no sky
except itself this white morning in May
with fog hiding the barns
that are empty now and hiding the mossed
limbs of gnarled walnut trees and the green
pastures unfurled along the slope
I know where they are and the birds
that are hidden in their own calls
in the cold morning
I was not born here I come and go
The next one is a profoundly philosophical musing, with a core truth. Everything is fleeting, and pleasure that can be forced to stay will become pain.
One of the Butterflies
The trouble with pleasure is the timing
it can overtake me without warning
and be gone before I know it is here
it can stand facing me unrecognized
while I am remembering somewhere else
in another age or someone not seen
for years and never to be seen again
in this world and it seems I cherish
only now a joy I was not aware of
when it was here although it remains
out of reach and will not be caught or named
or called back and if I could make it stay
as I want to it would turn into pain
I’ll end with one more beautiful word picture.
Falling
Long before daybreak
none of the birds yet awake
rain comes down with the sound
of a huge wind rushing
through the valley trees
it comes down around us
all at the same time
and beyond it there is nothing
it falls without hearing itself
without knowing
there is anyone here
without seeing where it is
or where it is going
like a moment of great
happiness of our own
that we cannot remember
coasting with the lights off
I will definitely have to find more Merwin collections for my library. The best would be that Library of America book - if anyone finds one lying around in a used book store…
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