Transit | W.S. Merwin | The New York Review of Books

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Wyatt was on the way home
on a mission
trusted again more or less
but in a strange bed he died
Dante had gone the same way
never getting home with his breath

and with faces not known
clouding over them
what are you doing here
at the end of the world
words far from the tree
and the green season
of hearing

and not dying this time
or not planning to
but staying on with things to do

and eyes that can do nothing for you
by the tuned shore of dust
all of it lit from behind after singing

so soon

W.S. Merwin

W.S. Merwin was born in New York City in 1927 and grew up in Union City, New Jersey, and in Scranton, Pennsylvania. From 1949 to 1951 he worked as a tutor in France, Portugal, and Majorca. He has since lived in many parts of the world, most recently on Maui in the Hawaiian Islands. He is the author of many books of poems, prose, and translations and has received both the Pulitzer and the Bollingen Prizes for poetry, among numerous other awards. His new poetry collection is The Moon Before Morning.

This Issue

March 28, 2002