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
– W.S. Merwin, from The Shadow of Sirius, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, 2009, published in 2008 by Copper Canyon Press
To browse through our archive of W.S. Merwin’s poetry, click here.
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Photo by Ken Douglas used under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic License (CC BY-NC 2.0). Photo depicts an art installation called Measuring the Universe (2007) by Slovakian artist Roman Ondák, which was installed and performed at museums such as the Tate Modern and MoMA. Each visitor to the gallery is asked to stand against the wall, their height is then measured and a mark made, named and dated using a pen. Beginning as an empty white space, over time the gallery gradually accumulates the traces of thousands of people. Each tiny line represents a different person.