WAVES IN AUGUST
There is a war in the distance
with the distance growing smaller
the field glasses lying at hand
are for keeping it far away
I thought I was getting better
about that returning childish
wish to be living somewhere else
that I knew was impossible
and now I find myself wishing
to be here to be alive here
it is impossible enough
to still be the wish of a child
in youth I hid a boat under
the bushes beside the water
knowing I would want it later
and come back and would find it there
someone else took it and left me
instead the sound of the water
with its whisper of vertigo
terror reassurance an old
old sadness it would seem we knew
enough always about parting
but we have to go on learning
as long as there is anything
THE CAUSEWAY
This is the bridge where at dusk they hear voices
far out in the meres and marshes or they say they hear voices
the bridge shakes and no one else is crossing at this hour
somewhere along here is where they hear voices
this is the only bridge though it keeps changing
from which some always say they hear voices
the sounds pronounce an older utterance out of the shadows
sometimes stifled sometimes carried from clear voices
what can be recognized in the archaic syllables
frightens many and tells others not to fear voices
travellers crossing the bridge have forgotten where they were going
in a passage between the remote and the near voices
there is a tale by now of a bridge a long time before this one
already old before the speech of our day and the mere voices
when the Goths were leaving their last kingdom in Scythia
they could feel the bridge shaking under their voices
the bank and the first spans are soon lost to sight
there seemed no end to the horses carts people and all their voices
in the mists at dusk the whole bridge sank under them
into the meres and marshes leaving nothing but their voices
they are still speaking the language of their last kingdom
that no one remembers who now hears their voices
whatever translates from those rags of sound
persuades some who hear them that they are familiar voices
grandparents never seen ancestors in their childhoods
now along the present bridge they sound like dear voices
some may have spoken in my own name in an earlier language
when last they drew breath in the kingdom of their voices
Copyright © 1999 by W. S. Merwin. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
