As In The Flame There Is The Wandering

 

To The Sonnet With My Soul

By W. S. Merwin

As in the wing there is the infinite flight
which in the flower is the erring essence,
as in the flame there is the wandering
brilliance, and in the blue the single sky;

 .as the consolation in the melody,
the penetrating coolness in the stream,
the noble opulence in the diamond,
so is my flesh in the total desire.

In you, sonnet, form, this pristine hunger,
imitates as a lingering water,
the multitude of immortal wonders.

.The endless clarity of your beauty is,
as a sky in a fountain, limitless
within the limitation of your borders.

---

“I needed my mistakes in their order to get me here.”

W. S. Merwin

---

 

Berryman

by W. S. Merwin

I will tell you what he told me
in the years just after the war
as we then called
the second world war

don’t lose your arrogance yet he said
you can do that when you’re older
lose it too soon and you may
merely replace it with vanity

just one time he suggested
changing the usual order
of the same words in a line of verse
why point out a thing twice

suggested I pray to the Muse
get down on my knees and pray
right there in the corner and he
said he meant it literally

it was in the days before the beard
and the drink but he was deep
in tides of his own through which he sailed
chin sideways and head tilted like a tacking sloop

he was far older than the dates allowed for
much older than I was he was in his thirties
he snapped down his nose with an accent
I think he had affected in England

as for publishing he advised me
to paper my wall with rejection slips
his lips and the bones of his long fingers trembled
with the vehemence of his views about poetry

he said the great presence
that permitted everything and transmuted it
in poetry was passion
passion was genius and he praised movement and invention

I had hardly begun to read
I asked how can you ever be sure
that what you write is really
any good at all and he said you can’t

you can’t you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don’t write