W.S. Merwin

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William Stanley (W.S.) Merwin was born in New York City in 1927 and raised in New Jersey and Scranton, Pennsylvania, the son of a Presbyterian minister. His numerous collections of poetry, his translations, and his books of prose have won praise over seven decades. Though his early poetry received great attention and admiration, Merwin would continue to alter and innovate his craft with each new book, and at each stage he served as a powerful influence for poets of his generation and younger poets.  For the entirety of his writing career, he explored a sense of wonder and celebrated the power of language, while serving as a staunch anti-war activist and advocate for the environment. He won nearly every award available to an American poet, and he was named U.S. poet laureate twice. A practicing Buddhist as well as a proponent of deep ecology, Merwin lived since the late 1970s on an old pineapple plantation in Hawaii which he has painstakingly restored to its original rainforest state. Poet Edward Hirsch wrote that Merwin “is one of the greatest poets of our age. He is a rare spiritual presence in American life and letters (the Thoreau of our era).” Merwin died in March 2019 at the age of 91. Source

Yesterday

My friend says I was not a good son

you understand

I say yes I understand

 

he says I did not go

to see my parents very often you know

and I say yes I know

 

even when I was living in the same city he says

maybe I would go there once

a month or maybe even less

I say oh yes

 

he says the last time I went to see my father

I say the last time I saw my father

 

he says the last time I saw my father

he was asking me about my life

how I was making out and he

went into the next room

to get something to give me

 

oh I say

feeling again the cold

of my father's hand the last time

he says and my father turned

in the doorway and saw me

look at my wristwatch and he

said you know I would like you to stay

and talk with me

 

oh yes I say

 

but if you are busy he said

I don't want you to feel that you

have to

just because I'm here

 

I say nothing

 

he says my father

said maybe

you have important work you are doing

or maybe you should be seeing

somebody I don't want to keep you

 

I look out the window

my friend is older than I am

he says and I told my father it was so

and I got up and left him then

you know

 

though there was nowhere I had to go

and nothing I had to do

 

Published:

1983

Length:

Regular

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Postmodernism

Anthology Years:

2025

Themes:

Death & Loss

Family

Friendship

Memory & The Past

Poems of the Everyday

Literary Devices:

Dialogue

conversation between two or more people as a feature of a book, play, or movie

Epistrophe

the repetition of a word or phrase at the end of successive clauses

Repetition

a recurrence of the same word or phrase two or more times

Symbolism

a word, object, action, character, or concept that embodies and evokes a range of additional meaning and significance.