Vox Populi
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Audio: W.S. Merwin reads “In Time”
Running time: 1 minute
The night the world was going to end
when we heard those explosions not far away
and the loudspeakers telling us
about the vast fires on the backwater
consuming undisclosed remnants
and warning us over and over
to stay indoors and make no signals
you stood at the open window
the light of one candle back in the room
we put on high boots to be ready
for wherever we might have to go
and we got out the oysters and sat
at the small table feeding them
to each other first with the fork
then from our mouths to each other
until there were none and we stood up
and started to dance without music
slowly we danced around and around
in circles and after a while we hummed
when the world was about to end
all those years all those nights ago
~~~~
From Migration: New & Selected Poems (Copper Canyon, 2007).
William Stanley Merwin (1927 – 2019) was an American poet who wrote more than fifty books of poetry and prose and produced many works in translation. During the 1960s anti-war movement, Merwin’s unique craft was thematically characterized by indirect, unpunctuated narration. In the 1980s and 1990s, his writing influence derived from an interest in Buddhist philosophy and deep ecology. Residing in a rural part of Maui, Hawaii, he wrote prolifically and was dedicated to the restoration of the island’s rainforests. Merwin received many honors, including the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1971 and 2009; the National Book Award for Poetry in 2005, and the Tanning Prize — one of the highest honors bestowed by the Academy of American Poets — as well as the Golden Wreath of the Struga Poetry Evenings. In 2010, the Library of Congress named him the 17th United States Poet Laureate. Alongside co-author Takako Lento, he received the Japan–U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literaturein 2013 for their translation of Collected Haiku of Yosa Buson. (bio adapted from Wiki)
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I have very much enjoyed this Merwin poem, “White Morning” — from The Vixen, a book I’ve spent much time with . . .
https://merwinconservancy.org/poems/white-morning-by-w-s-merwin/
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Thanks, Mike, for including the link to the poem. I just re-read it. Merwin has so many great poems, I’d forgotten about this one. Beautiful!
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Merwin is among my very, very, very favorite of American poets. Top Tier.
Here is my favorite of his short poems. Where did this come from? The rhythm….there are 4 beats/line and nine syllables a line. This from The New Yorker:
POEMS February 24, 2008
RAIN LIGHT
By W. S. Merwin
All day the stars watch from long ago
my mother said I am going now
when you are alone you will be all right
whether or not you know you will know
look at the old house in the dawn rain
all the flowers are forms of water
the sun reminds them through a white cloud
touches the patchwork spread on the hill
the washed colors of the afterlife
that lived there long before you were born
see how they wake without a question
even though the whole world is burning
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Thanks for this poem, HC. Beautiful!
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Stunning.
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yes, he is…
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Love this poem. Love Merwin. Merwin is on my list of poets I cannot do without.
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me too, Donna.
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Yes! ❤
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A lovely reading, growing more musical as the end approached.
I’ve long been interested in how poets read. Some mumble, others treat the reading like performance art, where the poet becomes the theme, rather than the poem, which is a prop. In my experience as an audience member, our local poet of renown, Robert Bly, would always read his poem twice. First time so the audience could gain a feel of the sound and length, etc. The second course for beginning to understand the textuality. Including the text of the poem, as Vox Populi does here with Merwin, allows that double duty of a Bly-like reading all at once.
Love makes endings different, especially if it’s not the love that’s ending. my new platitude for the day. Never too late to invent another.
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Spot on, Jim!
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he’s magical
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he really is
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it did not end then…but now…when we feed one another prayers and yes, lies and fears…all these nights…now…and now and now…may dear Merwin hum for us yet, knowing as he did, that the circles return and return…pray for us now , and at this hour of hour birth…
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thank you for this, Margo.
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just needed to correct my own dang typo. this hour of “our” birth. xxx, m
it did not end then…but now…when we feed one another prayers and yes, lies and fears…all these nights…now…and now and now…may dear Merwin hum for us yet, knowing as he did, that the circles return and return…pray for us now , and at this hour of our birth…
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Thank you, dear Margo! Your reply here is itself a prayer! ❤
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How wonderful to hear Merwin himself read this extraordinary poem.
…and after a while we hummed
when the world was about to end
all those years all those nights ago.
And the world is still about to end. Keeps ending in fact, for so many people.
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I love this poem as well. The end of the world turns out to be an opportunity to be with the people we love.
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That too, Michael. Your comment really moves me.
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