lenten journal: we are saying thank you
I opened my laptop this evening to the news that W. S. Merwin died yesterday. He was a prolific and powerful poet whose words have left their mark on my life. I am going to use this page to share some of those with you.
My first introduction to him was “For the Anniversary of My Death,” which took on new meaning as I read it today.
Every year without knowing it I have passed the day When the last fires will wave to meAnd the silence will set outTireless travelerLike 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
His poems are full of both grief and gratitude, as you will see in the verses that follow. His words feel simple and rich at the same time. Here is one simply titled “My Friends.”
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
Here is one I only recently found, though it is not new, called “The Laughing Child.”
When she looked down from the kitchen windowinto the back yard and the brown wickerbaby carriage in which she had tucked methree months old to lie out in the fresh airof my first January the carriagewas shaking she said and went on shakingand she saw I was lying there laughingshe told me about it later it wassomething that reassured her in a lifein which she had lost everyone she lovedbefore I was born and she had just begunto believe that she might be able tokeep me as I lay there in the winterlaughing it was what she was thinking oflater when she told me that I had beena happy child and she must have kept thatthrough the gray cloud of all her days and nowout of the horn of dreams of my own lifeI wake again into the laughing child
“Yesterday” speaks to the role of a child in another stage of life, as well as the comfort of a friend.
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
Perhaps the poem of his I come back to the most is “Thanks” because of its tenacious hope and compassionate courage.
back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you
with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is
As I said, gratitude and grief run though his poems. I will close with “Variations on a Theme,” which is about both.
Thank you my life long afternoonlate in this spring that has no agemy window above the riverfor the woman you led me towhen it was time at last the wordscoming to me out of mid-airthat carried me through the clear dayand come even now to find mefor old friends and echoes of themthose mistakes only I could makehomesickness that guides the ploversfrom somewhere they had loved beforethey knew they loved it to somewherethey had loved before they saw itthank you good body hand and eyeand the places and moments knownonly to me revisitingonce more complete just as they areand the morning stars I have seenand the dogs who are guiding me
To say thank you for his life and words seems the best thing to do.
Peace,
Milton
