WS Merwin
You know how you
will be looking for somewhere
and come by surprise to a long cement bridge
sailing out over a wide
cement ditch carved deep into a hill
between whose banks the traffic is rushing
in both directions
in what is now the air above it
there was once a pasture
beside dark woods
I saw it
and a swamp near the first trees
with a pump house hidden
in low green blackberry bushes
and mist coming off the upland marsh
first thing in the morning
and on the cold hill
a man and a boy
planting potatoes
with a mule keeping ahead of them
climbing the furrows
through the morning smelling of
wet grass
none of them seeing
the white bird fly over
I love this poem. I love the sense of nostalgia. I love the cement juxtaposed with morning mist on the marsh. I love how you know this is Merwin looking back on a moment earlier in his life but you don't know it's Merwin looking back on a moment earlier in his life. I love how the poem's images focus on placement in space and direction--things above us like a bridge and the air, but also things below us like the ditch and the potatoes are constantly thread throughout the piece. I love even the silliest of things like how the white bird at the end circles back to the title creating two overpasses so drastically different in their meanings. I love the sadness of it all but how, as a reader, we're not told to be sad. We're just sort of sad, probably in the same way the narrator was when he came upon this place, searching for something that has since been replaced.
You know how you
will be looking for somewhere
and come by surprise to a long cement bridge
sailing out over a wide
cement ditch carved deep into a hill
between whose banks the traffic is rushing
in both directions
in what is now the air above it
there was once a pasture
beside dark woods
I saw it
and a swamp near the first trees
with a pump house hidden
in low green blackberry bushes
and mist coming off the upland marsh
first thing in the morning
and on the cold hill
a man and a boy
planting potatoes
with a mule keeping ahead of them
climbing the furrows
through the morning smelling of
wet grass
none of them seeing
the white bird fly over
I love this poem. I love the sense of nostalgia. I love the cement juxtaposed with morning mist on the marsh. I love how you know this is Merwin looking back on a moment earlier in his life but you don't know it's Merwin looking back on a moment earlier in his life. I love how the poem's images focus on placement in space and direction--things above us like a bridge and the air, but also things below us like the ditch and the potatoes are constantly thread throughout the piece. I love even the silliest of things like how the white bird at the end circles back to the title creating two overpasses so drastically different in their meanings. I love the sadness of it all but how, as a reader, we're not told to be sad. We're just sort of sad, probably in the same way the narrator was when he came upon this place, searching for something that has since been replaced.
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