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You are here: Home / Poems / “Hearing the Names of the Valleys” by W.S. Merwin

“Hearing the Names of the Valleys” by W.S. Merwin

June 19, 2017 By Merwin Conservancy

Steve Jurvetson - Wall of Tears - Flickr
On the slopes of Pu‘u Kukui in Waihe’e Valley, Maui. Photo: STEVE JURVETSON

HEARING THE NAMES OF THE VALLEYS

Finally the old man is telling
the forgotten names
and the names of the stones they came from
for a long time I asked him the names
and when he says them at last
I hear no meaning
and cannot remember the sounds

I have lived without knowing
the names for the water
from one rock
and the water from another
and behind the names that I do not have
the color of water flows all day and all night
the old man tells me the name for it
and as he says it I forget it

there are names for the water
between here and there
between places now gone
except in the porcelain faces
on the tombstones
and places still here

and I ask him again
the name for the color of water
wanting to be able to say it
as though I had known it all my life
without giving it a thought

 

— W.S. Merwin, from his 1988 book The Rain in the Trees.  Copyright © 1988 by W. S. Merwin. Used by permission of the publisher, Knopf.


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 Steve Jurvetson used under an Attribution 2.0 Generic License (CC BY 2.0). The original image can be found here.

 

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