W.S. Merwin - Youth

Youth

Through all of youth I was looking for you
without knowing what I was looking for

or what to call you I think I did not
even know I was looking how would I

have known you when I saw you as I did
time after time when you appeared to me

as you did naked offering yourself
entirely at that moment and you let

me breathe you touch you taste you knowing
no more than I did and only when I

began to think of losing you did I
recognize you when you were already

part memory part distance remaining
mine in the ways that I learn to miss you

from what we cannot hold the stars are made

from W.S. Merwin's collection The Shadow of Sirius.


For me, it is all about that final line; so full of insight that breeds wonder instead of complacency. The line is just on the verge of sounding cheap and clichéd. I wonder whether I would feel the same way about it if it had been written by the author in his twenties rather than his eighties? Either way, it lights my eyes every time I read it.

I'm a pretty young man but I feel I am on the cusp of the moment Merwin is invoking here; that place in one's lifetime where the adventures of youth become "part memory part distance".

There is a great Bill Moyers interview where Merwin, who has won Pulitzers in both 1971 and 2009, shares some wonderful insight into craft and process. This quote is a personal favorite:


"Poetry's really about what can't be said. And you address it when you can't find words for something. And the idea is, is that the poet probably finds words for things. But if you ask the poet, the poet will tell you, you can't find words for it. Nobody finds words for grief. Nobody finds words for love. Nobody finds words for lust. Nobody found — finds words for real anger. These are things that always escape words."


Youth and Good Night at Writer's Almanac

Buy The Shadow of Sirius

Interview with Bill Moyers