The Merwin Conservancy

Inspiring innovation in the arts and sciences by advancing the ideas of W.S. Merwin

JOURNAL

“One Story” by W.S. Merwin

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Merwin Greenhouse by Gwen Arkin
Photo by Gwen Arkin

ONE STORY

Always somewhere in the story
which up until now we thought
was ours whoever it was
that we were being then
had to wander out into
the green towering forest
reaching to the end of
the world and beyond older
than anything whoever
we were being could remember
and find there that it was
no different from the story

anywhere in the forest
and never be able to tell
as long as the story was there
whether the fiery voices
now far ahead now under
foot the eyes staring from
their instant that held the story
as one breath the shadows
offering their spread flowers
and the chill that leapt from its own
turn through the hair of the nape
like a light through a forest

knew the untold story
all along and were waiting
at the right place as the moment
arrived for whoever it was
to be led at last by the wiles
of ignorance through the forest
and come before them face
to face for the first time
recognizing them with
no names and again surviving
seizing something alive
to take home out of the story

but what came out of the forest
was all part of the story
whatever died on the way
or was named by no longer
recognizable even
what vanished out of the story
finally day after day
was becoming the story
so that when there is no more
story that will be our
story when there is no
forest that will be our forest

— W.S. Merwin, from Travels (Knopf, 1993), also found in Migration: New & Selected Poems(Copper Canyon Press, 2005), winner of the National Book Award. Used with the permission of the publisher.

“To This May” by W.S. Merwin

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Photo credit: Andre Raine/Kaua’i Endangered Seabird Recovery Project

TO THIS MAY

They know so much more now about
the heart we are told but the world
still seems to come one at a time
one day one year one season and here
it is spring once more with its birds
nesting in the holes in the walls
its morning finding the first time
its light pretending not to move
always beginning as it goes

— W.S. Merwin, from his book Present Company, published by Copper Canyon Press in 2005. Used by permission of the publishers, www.coppercanyonpress.org.

Copyright © 2005 by W.S. Merwin. 

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

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

Featured image by Andre Raine/Kaua’i Endangered Seabird Recovery Project, used under Creative Commons license. The original image can be found here.

“Spring” by W.S. Merwin

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SPRING

The glass stems of the clouds are breaking
the gray flowers are caught up
and carried in silence to their invisible mountain
a hair of music is flying
over the line of cold lakes
from which our eyes were made
everything in the world has been lost and lost
but soon we will find it again
and understand what it told us when we loved it

— W.S. Merwin, from his book Writings to an Unfinished Accompaniment (Atheneum, 1973), also found in the National Book Award-winning collection Migration: New and Selected Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2005).

Copyright ©2005 by W. S. Merwin.  Used by permission of the publishers.

“Shaving Without a Mirror” by W.S. Merwin

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SHAVING WITHOUT A MIRROR

As though there could be more    than one center
many skies cleared in the night    and there it is
the mountain this face of it    still brindled with cloud shadows
if I raised my hand    I could touch it like air
high shallow valleys    cradling the clear wind
all like a thing remembered    where haystacks waited for winter

but now it is so blue    would there be eyes in it
looking out from dark nerves    as the morning passes in our time
while the sound of a plane rises    behind me beyond trees
so that I breathe and reach up to the air    and feel water
it is myself    the listener to the music
to the clouds in the gray passes    and the clear leaves

where are the forest voices    now that the forests have gone
and those from above the treeline    oh where that fed on fog
of a simpler compound    that satisfied them
when did I ever knowingly    set hands on a cloud
who have walked in one often    following the rim in anger
Brother the world is blind    and surely you come from it
where children grow steadily    without knowledge of creatures

other than domesticated    through rags of woods yet emerge
as the clouds part and sweep on    passing southward in spring
fingers crossing the slopes    shadows running leaping
all night that peak watched    the beacon over the sea
and answered nothing    now it turns to the morning
an expression of knowledge    above immigrant woods

nothing is native of fire    and everything is born of it
then I wash my face    as usual
trying to remember a date    before the war
coming to a green farm at sunrise    dew smell from pastures
after that there were various    graduations
this passion for counting    has no root of its own
I stand by a line of trees    staring at a bare summit
do I think I was born here    I was never born

– W.S. Merwin, from Opening the Hand (Atheneum, 1983). Copyright © 1983 by W. S. Merwin. Used with permission of the publishers. 

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.

Photo by Larry Cameron, used with permission.