ASH
The church in the forest
was built of wood
the faithful carved their names by the doors
same names as ours
soldiers burned it down
the next church where the first had stood
was built of wood
with charcoal floors
names were written in black by the doors
same names as ours
soldiers burned it down
we have a church where the others stood
it’s made of ash
no roof no doors
nothing on earth
says it’s ours
— W.S. Merwin, from his book Writings to an Unfinished Accompaniment. Copyright © 1973 by W. S. Merwin. Included in The Essential W.S. Merwin, available now on pre-order. Used by permission of the publishers, www.coppercanyonpress.org.
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Featured photo by EightBitTony, found on Flickr here. This photo is used under Creative Commons’ Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic License (CC BY-NC 2.0).