W.S. MERWIN In Time The night the world was going to end when we heard those explosions not far away and the loudspeakers telling us about the vast fires on the backwater consuming undisclosed remnants and warning us over and over to stay indoors and make no signals you stood at the open window the light of one candle back in the room we put on high boots to be ready for wherever we might have to go and we got out the oysters and sat at the small table feeding them to each other first with the fork then from our mouths to each other until there were none and we stood up and started to dance without music slowly we danced around and around in circles and after a while we hummed when the world was about to end all those years all those nights ago
The Pupil (2001, Knopf)
Im studying Merwin right now- my grandmother’s poetry aligns with his tone and it all feels very synchronistic ✨
Lovely piece, thank you for spotlighting this brilliant former Laureate.
Merwin knew that the line break was doing something that punctuation couldn't. "We stood up and started to dance without music" is a better ending than almost anything I've read this week.