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You are here: Home / Poems / “December Among the Vanished” by W.S. Merwin

“December Among the Vanished” by W.S. Merwin

December 19, 2016 By Sara Tekula

Photo by Gabriele Negri
Photo by Gabriele Negri

 

DECEMBER AMONG THE VANISHED

The old snow gets up and moves taking its
Birds with it

The beasts hide in the knitted walls
From the winter that lipless man
Hinges echo but nothing opens

A silence before this one
Has left its broken huts facing the pastures
Through their stone roofs the snow
And the darkness walk down

In one of them I sit with a dead shepherd
And watch his lambs

— W.S. Merwin, from his book The Lice and The Second Four Books of Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 1992).  Copyright © 1992 by W. S. Merwin.  Used by permission of the publishers, www.coppercanyonpress.org.


To browse through our archive of previously posted Poems of the Week, click here.

To support the preservation of W.S. Merwin’s legacy and our efforts to preserve his home and palm forest for future generations, please consider making a tax-deductible donation to The Merwin Conservancy.

Featured photo by Gabriele Negri can be found here and is used under Creative Commons License CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

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  1. Lori McGinn says

    December 26, 2016 at 5:56 am

    I can picture the snow with a blanket of beasts walking.
    And you. With your lamb. <3

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