W.S. Merwin Quotes

A garden is made of hope.

Modern poetry, for me, began not in English at all but in Spanish, in the poems of Lorca.

My words are the garment of what I shall never be Like the tucked sleeve of a one-armed boy.

I offer you what I have myPoverty

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

Through all of youth I was looking for youwithout knowing what I was looking for

We keep asking where they have gonethose years we remember and wereach for them like hands in the night

Separation Your absence has gone through me Like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color.

What you remember saves you.

from what we cannot hold the stars are made

I think there's a kind of desperate hope built into poetry now that one really wants, hopelessly, to save the world. One is trying to say everything that can be said for the things that one loves while there's still time.

So this is what I amPondering his eyes that could notConceive that I was a creature to run fromI who have always believed too much in words

On the last day of the worldI would want to plant a tree

even there a shining is flowing from all the stonesthough the eyes are not yet made that can see it