W.S. Merwin

“I offer you what I have myPoverty”

“part memory part distance remainingmine in the ways that I learn to miss you”

“We keep asking where they have gonethose years we remember and wereach for them like hands in the night”

“What you remember saves you.”

“from what we cannot hold the stars are made”

“My words are the garment of what I shall never be Like the tucked sleeve of a one-armed boy.”

“Through all of youth I was looking for youwithout knowing what I was looking for”

“Modern poetry, for me, began not in English at all but in Spanish, in the poems of Lorca.”

“Separation Your absence has gone through me Like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color.”

“A garden is made of hope.”

“So this is what I amPondering his eyes that could notConceive that I was a creature to run fromI who have always believed too much in words”