The beautiful two-volume Collected Poems of W. S. Merwin, published by The Library of America, arrived in the mail today!
A Sliver of Hope
Amused angels of the impossible
transmit their invitations to the
tip of my spine where they quiver
with a Nabokovian sob. So certain
these things are not meant for
me I seek leave through side
doors of familiar fear, where now a
grinning angel blocks me.
© 2013 David A. Welch
Companion
I heard about a conversation
I was supposed to be a part of it
There was a gathering of ordinary
Objects calling me out of myself
There was something I wanted to say
If I was willing to hear it
Every week I pack it along
With my razor and socks it hasn’t
Lost patience it listens
For me as I pass by the company
Cafe and the people who wait
For people without fear
© 2013 David A. Welch
You Can’t Control It
This morning the sky and the trees
were on fire with the memory of rain
I am afraid to unlock the vault of suffering
so the book of joy remains unwritten
a suitcase full of clocks is sewn into my chest
departure delayed your life is imminent
© 2013 David A. Welch
Notes On A Talk By W.S. Merwin
When I was in graduate school at NYU, I occasionally spent time wandering the stacks of Bobst Library. With only a subject matter and a range of Dewey Decimal numbers in mind, I'd take to the shelves intuitively--looking for interesting book titles to crack open. One afternoon, while scanning a long and deserted isle of poetry under the indifferent hum of the library's fluorescent lights I found a book of verse whose title offered the possibility that its contents may have some connection to musical or sonic things.
For A Coming Extinction
Let us protect Christ in our lives, so that we can protect others, so that we can protect creation!
The vocation of being a “protector”, however, is not just something involving us Christians alone; it also has a prior dimension which is simply human, involving everyone. It means protecting all creation, the beauty of the created world, as the Book of Genesis tells us and as Saint Francis of Assisi showed us [. . .] In the end, everything has been entrusted to our protection, and all of us are responsible for it. Be protectors of God’s gifts!
~ Pope Francis, Mass for the Beginning of the Petrine Ministry, 19 March 2013
For A Coming Extinction
By W. S. Merwin
Gray whale
Now that we are sending you to The End
That great god
Tell him
That we who follow you invented forgiveness
And forgive nothing
I write as though you could understand
And I could say it
One must always pretend something
Among the dying
When you have left the seas nodding on their stalks
Empty of you
Tell him that we were made
On another day
The bewilderment will diminish like an echo
Winding along your inner mountains
Unheard by us
And find its way out
Leaving behind it the future
Dead
And ours
When you will not see again
The whale calves trying the light
Consider what you will find in the black garden
And its court
The sea cows the Great Auks the gorillas
The irreplaceable hosts ranged countless
And fore-ordaining as stars
Our sacrifices
Join your work to theirs
Tell him
That it is we who are important
Nocturne
Nocturne
by W. S. Merwin
The stars emerge one
by one into the names
that were last found for them
far back in other
darkness no one remembers
by watchers whose own
names were forgotten
later in the dark
and as the night deepens
other lumens begin
to appear around them
as though they were shining
through the same instant
from a single depth of age
though the time between
each one of them
and its nearest neighbor
may include in its span
the whole moment of the earth
turning in a light
that is not its own
with the complete course
of life upon it
born to brief reflection
recognition and anguish
from one cell evolving
to remember daylight
laughter and distant music
Viva Papa
Let the risen Jesus enter your life, welcome him as a friend, with trust: he is life! If up till now you have kept him at a distance, step forward. He will receive you with open arms. If you have been indifferent, take a risk: you won’t be disappointed. If following him seems difficult, don’t be afraid, trust him, be confident that he is close to you, he is with you and he will give you the peace you are looking for and the strength to live as he would have you do.
~ Pope Francis, Easter Vigil
Don’t Get Poetry?--Try Climbing It
Reading poetry is all about climbing.
I mean it. People who climb trees, rock faces, or the sides of playground equipment have a much better chance of “getting” poetry than non-climbers. It’s all about finding out how your voice and your gestures move through a poem.
The technical term for reading the materiality of a poem is scansion from the Latin scansio meaning act of climbing (
An interesting approach to reading poetry. I'm not a climber, but I find the analogy makes sense. It also made me think immediately of a poem by Robinson Jeffers, "Oh, Lovely Rock":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jI3mtBFfl1M
Selective Affinities: W.S. Merwin and Robinson Jeffers
W.S. Merwin, like many other poets and scholars, has expressed reservations about Robinson Jeffers’ (occasional? pervasive?) misanthropy and nihilism, yet the affinities between these two great American poets are striking. Those affinities are explored in a fascinating essay by David J. Rothman, president of the Robinson Jeffers Association.
While as a Christian believer I vigorously reject the atheism adopted by both Merwin and Jeffers, the beauty of their poetry — even if it contains grievous error at the theological level — is irresistible. As Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI said, every believer must acknowledge the shadow of doubt that accompanies the light of faith. The intensity of vision achieved by poets like Merwin and Jeffers carries the burden of that shadow and even embraces it (an act of folly to the Christian mind), yet the beauty forged in that embrace by the creative imagination is an implicit testimony to the light.
