The Thursday Short Poem

Annika and Jen regularly post poems that have real meaning for them. I like the idea of posting (short) examples of some of our favorites. Here at the Hugoboy, we're now beginning the practice of The Thursday Short Poem.

My favorite living American poet (lots of qualifiers) is W.S. Merwin. My favorite of his poems is "Vixen":

Comet of stillness princess of what is over
high note held without trembling without voice without sound
aura of complete darkness keeper of the kept secrets
of the destroyed stories the escaped dreams the sentences
never caught in words warden of where the river went
touch of its surface sibyl of the extinguished
window onto the hidden place and the other time
at the foot of the wall by the road patient without waiting
in the full moonlight of autumn at the hour when I was born
you no longer go out like a flame at the sight of me
you are still warmer than the moonlight gleaming on you
even now you are unharmed even now perfect
as you have always been now when your light paws are running on
the breathless night on the bridge with one end I remember you
when I have heard you the soles of my feet have made answer when
I have seen you I have waked and slipped from the calendars
from the creeds of difference and contradictions
that were my life and all the crumbling fabrications
as long as it lasted until something that we were
had ended when you are no longer anything
let me catch sight of you again going over the wall
and before the garden is extinct and the woods are figures
guttering on a screen let my words find their own
places in the silence after the animals

The first time I read it, I was standing in the Earthling Bookstore in Santa Barbara in June 1996, and I burst into tears right there. I read it aloud, softly to myself, over and over again, until the page was wet and I had to buy the book. (Merwin is one of those poets who MUST be read aloud, or he makes no sense; getting used to the absence of punctuation is always tough!) I often recite these lines to myself on long runs:

when I have heard you the soles of my feet have made answer when
I have seen you I have waked and slipped from the calendars
from the creeds of difference and contradictions
that were my life and all the crumbling fabrications...

I've changed my mind 16 times as to what it means. But damn, it's still good.

Comments

[Michelle]

Beautiful poem. Now I have to share my favorite...

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any -lifted from the no
of all nothing- human merely being
doubt unimaginably You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

e. e. cummings

[Hugo]

Haven't read that one in years -- excellent!

[Lorie]

Wow, that's a lovely one, Hugo. I've read it through a few times just sitting here and I'm sure I'll read it a few more, till I get the rhythm fully developed in my head.