NOAH’S RAVEN
Why should I have returned?
My knowledge would not fit into theirs.
I found untouched the desert of the unknown,
Big enough for my feet. It is my home.
It is always beyond them. The future
Splits the present with the echo of my voice.
Hoarse with fulfillment, I never made promises.
— W.S. Merwin, from his book The Moving Target (1963), and found in a new collection covering Merwin’s 7-decade career, The Essential W.S. Merwin. Copyright © 2017 by W. S. Merwin. Used by permission of the publishers, www.coppercanyonpress.org.
The Essential W.S. Merwin is now available as a free gift for a new donation of $100 or more to The Merwin Conservancy. Offer ends at midnight, September 4th.
To browse through our archive of previously posted Poems of the Week, click here.
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Featured photo “Raven” by Jarkko Järvinen is used under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC 2.0. The original photo is found here.