-a letter to W.S. Merwin Today I am reading The Moon Before Morning I should have read it years ago when a friend gave it to me but I was lazy and anxious it is filled with unpunctuated invitations to pause and shadows and sounds made by rain right now outside my window I hear the scratch of a stick broom and the shrill whine of a distant siren late last night clouds hid the moon and later it rained and this morning when I took in the newspaper I saw I had slept through it but I remembered that I’d woken at dawn to warmth and the gentle rustle of pigeon wings and that I’d thought This moment is complete just as it is yes sometimes I do remember the scent of pine trees and water and the feel of my grandmother’s hand in my hair and I wish I could return to her and to that place and to that time when I worried less yes I am reading your poems with close attention and I am glad you have found old trees and a quiet garden near a pond that greets the returning geese each year but outside my window a sickness has spread from the Ministry of Home Affairs to Northeast Delhi and to the forests of Jharkhand and to every place where people gather around TV’s radios and smartphones and no vaccine cooled by dry ice can stop it I can see from the final poems in this book that you would understand what I am saying and also that you would remember what you wrote five decades ago about the Vietnam War When the forests have been destroyed their darkness remain [the last line quoted here comes from an old Merwin poem, ‘The Asians Dying’]Comments closed
Poems about the dark times.