elegy for a walnut tree

Old friend now there is no one alive

who remembers when you were young

it was high summer when I first saw you

in the blaze of day most of my life ago

with the dry grass whispering in your shade

and already you had lived through wars

and echoes of wars around your silence

through days of parting and seasons of absence

with the house emptying as the years went their way

until it was home to bats and swallows

and still when spring climbed toward summer

you opened once more the curled sleeping fingers

of newborn leaves as though nothing had happened

you and the seasons spoke the same language

and all these years I have looked through your limbs

to the river below and the roofs and the night

and you were the way I saw the world

~ W. S. Merwin

with thanks to Writer's Almanac

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utterance

Sitting over words

very late I have heard a kind of whispered sighing

not far

like a night wind in pines or like the sea in the dark

the echo of everything that has ever

been spoken

still spinning its one syllable

between the earth and silence

~ W. S. Merwin

 from The Rain in the Trees

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unknown age

.

For all the features it hoards and displays

age seems to be without substance at any time

whether morning or evening it is a moment of air

held between the hands like a stunned bird

while I stand remembering light in the trees

of another century on a continent long submerged

with no way of telling whether the leaves at that time

felt memory as they were touching the day

and no knowledge of what happened to the reflections

on the pond's surface that never were seen again

the bird lies still while the light goes on flying

.

~ W.S. Merwin

from The Shadow of Sirius

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parts of a tune

One old man keeps humming the same few notes

of some song he thought he had forgotten 

back in the days when as he knows there was 

no word for life in the language

and if they wanted to say eyes or heart

they would hold up a leaf and he remembers

the big tree where it rose from the dry ground

and the way the birds carried water in their voice

they were all the color of their fear of the dark

and as he sits there humming he remembers

some of the words they come back to him now

he smiles hearing them come and go

~ W.S. Merwin

from The Shadow of Sirius

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to finding again

.

.

Everything else must have changed

must be different

by the time you appear

more than ever the same

.

taking me by surprise

in my difference

my age

long after I had come 

to the end 

of believing in you

to the end of hope

.

which was not even 

the first of the changes

.

when I imagined 

that I was forgetting you

you did not even need memory

to remain there

letting the years vanish

the miles depart

.

nothing surprising in that

.

even longing

does not need memory

to know what to reach for 

.

and nothing surprises you

who were always there

wherever it was

.

beyond belief

.

~ W.S. Merwin

from Present Company

.

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to being late

.

Again again you are

the right time after all

.

not according to 

however we planned it

.

unforeseen and yet

only too well known

mislaid horizon

where we come to ourselves

as though we had been expected

.

you are where it appears now

and will stay from now on 

in its own good time

it was you we came to 

in the first place

hearing voices around us

before we knew what they said

.

but you always surprise us 

it is you that we 

hurry to

while you go on waiting

to the end of space

.

and when we get to you

we stop and listen

trying to hear whether

you are still there

.

~ W.S. Merwin

from Present Company

.

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to myself

.

.

Even when I forget you

I go on looking for you

I believe I would know you

I keep remembering you

sometimes long ago but then

other times I am sure you

were here a moment before

and the air is still alive

around where you were and I 

think then I can recognize

you who are always the same

who pretend to be time but 

you are not time and who speak

in the words but you are not 

what they say you who are not 

lost when I do not find you

.

~ W. S. Merwin

from Present Company

.

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One Valley

.

.

Once I thought I could find

where it began

but that never happened

though I went looking for it

time and again

cutting my way past 

empty pools and dry waterfalls

where my dog ran straight up the stone

like an unmoored flame

.

it seemed that the beginning

could not be far then as I went on through the trees 

over the rocks toward the mountain

until I came out in the open

and saw no sign of it

.

where the roaring torrent

raced at one time

to carve farther down

those high walls in the stone

for the silence that I hear now

day and night on its way to the sea

.

~ W.S. Merwin
from The Shadow of Sirius
photo by Ansel Adams

.

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losing a language

.

A breath leaves the sentences and does not come back

yet the old still remember something that they could say

.

but they know now that such things are no longer believed

and the young have fewer words

.

many of the things the words were about

no longer exist

.

the noun for standing in mist by a haunted tree

the verb for I

.

the children will not repeat

the phrases their parents speak

.

somebody has persuaded them

that it is better to say everything differently

.

so that they can be admired somewhere

farther and farther away

.

where nothing that is here is known

we have little to say to each other

.

we are wrong and dark

in the eyes of the new owners

.

the radio is incomprehensible

the day is glass

.

when there is a voice at the door it is foreign

everywhere instead of a name there is a lie

.

nobody has seen it happening

nobody remembers

.

this is what the words were made

to prophesy

.

here are the extinct feathers

here is the rain we saw

.

~ W.S. Merwin

from Migration

.

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dew light

.

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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under the day

.

To come back like autumn

to the moss on the stones 

after many seasons 

to recur as a face

backlit on the surface

of a dark pool one day

after the year has turned

from the summer it saw

while the first yellow leaves

stare from their forgetting

and the branches grow spare

.

is to waken backward

down through the still water

knowing without touching

all that was ever there

and has been forgotten 

and recognize without

name or understanding

without believing or

holding or direction

in the way that we see

at each moment the air.

.

~ W.S. Merwin

from The Pupil

.

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the comet museum

.

.

So the feeling comes afterward

some of it may reach us only

long afterward when the moment 

itself is beyond reckoning

.

beyond time beyond memory 

as though it were not moving in 

heaven neither burning farther

through any past nor ever to 

arrive again in time to be 

when it has gone the senses wake

.

all through the day they wait for it

here are pictures that someone took

of what escaped us at the time

only now can we remember

.

~ W.S. Merwin

from The Pupil

.

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to prose

.

.

Whatever you may say

whatever you pretend

you do not begin or end

when the stories do

the ones that you repeat

later starting again

or when the days that you tell

all those that never

themselves said a word

have long been utterly still

and yet you were there 

when they were 

you were heard

commenting in the unmetered

service of understanding

your description

remains current for some time

after the face has gone

even if not written down

but you are different

from what you recount

and although we know 

only scattered fragments of you

glimpses of birds in bushes

gestures in car windows 

of which we forget

at once almost everything 

you define us

we are the ones who need you

we can no longer tell

whether we believe

anything without you

or whether we can hear

all that you are not

O web of answer

sea of forgetting is it true

that you remember

.

~ W.S. Merwin

from Present Company

.

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to the sorrow string

.

.

.

You invisible one

resounding on your own

whatever the others 

happen to be playing

source of a note

not there in the score

under whatever key

unphrased continuo

gut stretched between

the beginning and the end

what would the music

be without you

since even through

the chorus of pure joy

the tears hear you

and nothing can restrain them

.

~ W.S. Merwin

.

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to the tongue

.

.

Whatever we say

we know there is another

language under this one

.

a word of it is always there on the tip of you

unsayable and early

O you for whom 

all languages have been named

who have none of your own

.

naked sleeper in the cave 

where you were born

dreamer without words

who first tasted 

a verb of the world

you who speak as though

you could see

.

you have not forgotten

the serpent your ancestor

its fluttering inarticulate flame

or expectation

on the way to you

.

~ W. S. Merwin

from Present Company

.

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sight

.

Once

a single cell

found that it was full of light

and for the first time there was seeing

.

when

I was a bird

I could see where the stars had turned

and I set out on my journey

.

high

in the head of a mountain goat

I could see across a valley

under the shining trees something moving

.

deep

in the green sea

I saw the two sides of the water

and swam between them

.

I

look at you

in the first light of the morning

for as long as I can

.

~ W. S. Merwin

.

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on the anniversary of my death

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 traveler

Like the beam of a lightless star

Then I will no longer

Find myself in life as in 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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How it Happens

.

The sky said I am watching

to see what you

can make out of nothing

I was looking up and I said

I thought you

were supposed to be doing that

the sky said Many

are clinging to that

I am giving you a chance

I was looking up and I said

I am the only chance I have

then the sky did not answer

and here we are

with our names for the days

the vast days that do not listen to us

.

~ W. S. Merwin

.

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Dogs

.

.

Many times loneliness

is someone else

an absence

then when loneliness is no longer

someone else many times

it is someone else's dog

that you're keeping

then when the dog disappears

and the dog's absence

you are alone at last

and loneliness many times

is yourself

that absence

but at last it may be

that you are your own dog

hungry on the way

the one sound climbing a mountain

higher than time

.

~ W.S. Merwin

Writings To An Unfinished Accompaniment

thanks to http://whiskeyriver.blogspot.com/

.

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Lights Out

.

The old grieving autumn goes on calling to its summer

the valley is calling to other valleys beyond the ridge

each star is roaring alone into darkness

there is not a sound in the whole night

.

~ W.S. Merwin

.

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