Collected Poems 1952-1993 by Merwin, W.S. -- Read -- Imperial Library of Trantor

Index

Title Page Copyright THE FIRST FOUR BOOKS OF POEMS

A MASK FOR JANUS

Anabasis (I) Anabasis (II) Rime of the Palmers Ballad of John Cable and Three Gentlemen Meng Tzu’s Song Blind William’s Song For a Dissolving Music Half Roundel A Dance of Death Variation on a Line by Emerson Over the Bier of the Worldling Epitaph on Certain Schismatics Suspicor Speculum Epitaph Ode: The Medusa Face Festival Dictum: For a Masque of Deluge The Bones of Palinurus Pray to the North Star Sestina Herons Song with the Eyes Closed Canción y Glosa Carol Carol of the Three Kings Carol A Poem for Dorothy Hermione on Simulnern Song Song

THE DANCING BEARS

Tower Runes for a Round Table The Lady with the Heron When I Came from Colchis You, Genoese Mariner Fable The Passion Margery’s Song Song of the Mad Menagerie Song of Marvels Song of Three Smiles Song of the New Fool East of the Sun and West of the Moon On the Subject of Poetry Proteus Colloquy at Penid December: Of Aphrodite Canso Canso Canso

GREEN WITH BEASTS

To Dido PART ONE

Leviathan Blue Cockerel Two Horses Dog White Gout, White Ram

PART TWO

The Bathers The Wilderness The Wakening The Prodigal Son The Annunciation The Mountain Saint Sebastian The Isaiah of Souillae The Station The Master Tobacco Burning the Cut Dog Dreaming Backwater Pond: The Canoeists River Sound Remembered After the Flood In the Heart of Europe A Spurrow Sheltering Under a Column of the British Museum Learning a Dead Language Three Faces Her Wisdom The Sapphire Thorn Leaves in March Low Fields and Light Birds Waking

PART THREE

Evening with Lee Shore and Cliffs The Fishermen Two Paintings by Alfred Wallis Senility Cay Fog The Shipwreck The Eyes of the Drowned Watch Keels Going Over Mariners’ Carol

THE DRUNK IN THE FURNACE

Odysseus The Iceberg Foghorn Deception Island Sea Wife The Frozen Sen Sailor Ashore The Portland Going Out Sen Monster Cape Dread Bell Buoy The Bones The Highway Fable Luther Bucolic Under the Old One No One In a Cloud of Hands In Stony Country Catullus XI Summer Some Winter Sparrows Plea for a Captive Choice of Prides The Climb Blind Girl One-Eye Small Woman on Swallow Street The Gleaners Pool Room in the Lions Club John Otto Uncle Hess Grandfather in the Old Men’s Home Grandmother Watching at Her Window Grandmother Dying The Native Burning Mountain Grandmother and Grandson The Hotel-Keepers The Drunk in the Furnace

THE SECOND FOUR BOOKS OF POEMS

Preface THE MOVING TARGET

Home for Thanksgiving A Letter from Gussie Lemuel’s Blessing By Day and By Night In the Gorge Separation The Defeated Noah’s Raven As By Water Things Savonarola Inscription for a Burned Bridge Economy Lost Month Dead Hand Acclimatization The Saint of the Uplands The Nails Sire Finally The Ships Are Made Ready in Silence Route with No Number To My Brother Hanson In the Night Fields Now and Again Another Year Come October Departure’s Girl-Friend One Way Recognition Invocation The Poem Second Sight Witnesses The Indigestion of the Vampire The Singer The Continuo Vocations Air The Present Standards From a Series Bread and Butter We Continue Marion Lart Reunion Walk-Up To Where We Are The Crossroads of the World Etc. Resolution Before That For the Grave of Posterity This Day of This Month of This Tear of This The Way to the River She Who Was Gone My Friends The Man Who Writes Ants The Next The Students of Justice An Island in the Harbor Mountain Town For Now Spring Day break

THE LICE

The Animals Is That What You Are The Hydra Some Last Questions An End in Spring I Live Up Here The Last One Unfinished Book of Kings It Is March Bread at Midnight Caesar Pieces for Other Lives The Moths Whenever I Go There Wish The Wave News of the Assassin April The Gods The River of Bees The Widow Looking East at Night The Child A Debt The Plaster In Autumn Crows on the North Slope New Moon in November December Night After the Solstice December Among the Vanished Glimpse of the Ice The Cold Before the Moonrise Early January The Room Dusk in Winter A Scale in May Evening The Dream Again How We Are Spared The Dragonfly Provision The Herds The Mourner For the Anniversary of My Death The Dry Stone Mason In the Winter of My Thirty-Eighth Year When You Go Away The Asians Dying When the War Is Over Peasant For a Coming Extinction In a Cleaving Avoiding News by the River Death of a Favorite Bird Fly The Finding of Reasons Come Back Watchers My Brothers the Silent In One of the Retreats of Morning Looking for Mushrooms at Sunrise

THE CARRIER OF LADDERS

Plane Teachers The Owl The Different Stars The Dead Hive The Mountains The Bridges The Hands Do Not Die Words from a Totem Animal Animula Quince The Judgment of Puris Edouard Not These Hills The Piper The Lake The Church A Calm in April The Birds on the Morning of Going Envoy from D’Aubigne Encounter The Well Lark The Black Plateau The Approaches The Wheels of the Trains Lackawanna Other Travelers to the River The Trail into Kansas Western Country The Gardens of Zuñi Homeland February Huckleberry Woman Little Horse The Port Presidents The Free The Prints The Removal The Old Room The Night of the Shirts Shoe Repairs Age Laughter Snowfall Banishment in Winter Footprints on the Glacier Tale Full Moonlight in Spring Night Wind Midnight in Early Spring As Though I Was Waiting for That The Plumbing Beginning of the Plains Ascent The Hulk Fear Pilaite Shore Psalm: Our Fathers Cuckoo Myth Second Psalm: The Signals The Pens The Forbears Voice Last People Third Psalm: The September Vision After the Harvests Now It Is Clear Man with One Leaf in October Night Woman from the River Late Night in Autumn Still Afternoon Light Kin Memory of Spring Signs The Paw The Thread The Blessing Beginning The First Darkness The Chuff Fourth Psalm: The Cerements The Web Letter Inscription Facing Western Sen The Sadness The Calling Under the Breath Sunset After Ruin Elegy In the Rime of the Blossoms

WRITINGS TO AN UNFINISHED ACCOMPANIMENT

Early One Summer Eyes of Summer End of Summer The Distances Looking Back Song of Man Chipping an Arrowhead The Silence Before Harvest Cat Ghosts Letter to the Heart Memory of the Loss of Wings The Old Boast The Day The Clear Skies To Be Sung While Still Looking Under the Migrants On the Silent Anniversary of a Reunion On Each Journey Beyond You Their Week Old Flag The Current Something I’ve Not Done Tool Bread Habits A Door A Door A Door A Door Surf-Casting At the Same Time The Wharf Beggars and Kings The Unwritten Spring The Place of Backs Division A Purgatory The Chase A Wood Nomad Songs The Diggers Ash Animals from Mountains Sibyl Who It Is Mist Under Blaek Leaves A Sickness at the Equinox Wanting a Soul in the South Horses Ship Words One Time The Way Ahead Summits To the Hand Folk Art The Second Time Exercise Instructions to Four Walls In the Life of Dust A Flea’s Carrying Words When the Horizon Is Gone The Lantern Apparition A Number Dogs The War The Water of the Suns A Prayer of the Eyes The Cry By the Cloud Path A Hollow For Saying That It Won’t Matter Foreword Finding a Teacher The Palace Ballade of Sayings To the Rain The Dreamers September Flies The Writing on a Fallen Leaf South Spun Meeting History of Alchemy The Initiate The Search Glass The Track Peril The Sleeping Mountain Gift

FLOWER & HAND THE COMPASS FLOWER

The Heart The Wine The Drive Home The Next Moon The Snow The Arrival Apples An Encampment at Morning Migration November The Horse A Contemporary Fishing Guardians Fate On the Mountain Vision The Deluge Robin

City Line The Estuary The Rock The Counting Houses The Helmsmen Numbered Apartment St. Vincent’s The Shuttles

III

The Vineyard Crossing Place Summer Night on the Stone Barrens September Plowing Working into Autumn Memory of Summer Facing West The Love for October Autumn Evening Kore Passage In the Pass Spring Equinox Full Moon The Morning Summer Doorway The Hosts Islands Mountain Day Snowline Twilight Lute Snow June Ruin White Summer Flower Trees Grass Beginning July

The Coin Ferry Port The Banquet Service Some of the Masts North Wind Island Junction Remembering a Boatman Assembly Old Garden The Fig Tree The Windows The Falcons The Trestle Talk of Fortune The Fountain Sun The Flight

FEATHERS FROM THE HILL

Time of Tree Cutting Summer Canyon Sound of Rapids of Laramie River in Late August Fireweed In the Red Mountains Road Island City By the Mango Trees Warm Pastures Sheep Clouds

OPENING THE HAND

The Waters The Oars Sunset Water The Waving of a Hand Strawberries A Pause by the Water Son Sun and Rain The Houses Apparitions Birdie The Burnt Child Yesterday Talking After a Storm The Cart Photograph Unknown Porebear A Family

Shaving Without a Mirror Visitation The Red House Tidal Lagoon Green Water Tower High Water Line of Trees A House to the West The Cow Questions to Tourists Stopped by a Pineapple Field The Briefcase Late Wonders Going Standing Nowhere Coming Back in the Spring Happens Every Day Sheridan The Fields

III

Palm The Shore The Night Surf The Quoit The Middle of Summer James Berryman A Birthday The Sea Cliffs at Kailua in December All The School on the Roof Going from the Green Window The Truth of Departure One Night Émigré What Is Modern Direction The New Season Hearing The Black Jewel

THE RAIN IN THE TREES

Late Spring West Wall The First Year Native Trees Touching the Tree Night Above the Avenue Now Renting Glasses Shadow Passing History Notes from a Journey Pastures After School Empty Water Rain at Night Waking to the Rain The Stilt Pond Summer ‘82 Before Us The Sound of the Light Sky in September Anniversary on the Island Sight The Solstice Coming to the Morning Being Early Travelling Together The Inevitable Lightness The Crust Mementos Print Fallen Out of Somewhere Utterance Paper Thanks At the Same Time Coming to Hear To the Insects After the Alphabets The Superstition The Overpass Snow For the Departure of a Stepson Airport Liberty Journey Memory The Duck Hearing the Names of the Valleys The Strangers from the Horizon Conqueror Native Place Witness Chord Losing a Language The Lost Originals Term Kanaloa The Horizons of Rooms Knock The Biology of Art The Archaic Maker Tracing the Letters The Rose Beetle

TRAVELS

Cover Note The Blind Seer of Ambon Manini Writing Lives The Hill of Evening Barn Rimbaud Piano Among Bells Search Party Missing Paul Kites A Distance The Morning Train Fulfilment The Lost Camellia of the Bartrams After Doublets Cinchona Inheritance The Day Itself Lives of the Artists Panes The Wars in New Jersey A Short Nap on the Way The Moment of Green The River So Far The Palms Immortelles Field Mushrooms Lunar Landscape Looking Up For the Year The Real World of Manuel Cordova Another Place One Story Rain Travel On the Back of the Boarding Pass Last Morning at Punta Arena Mirage On the Old Way Left Open Stone Village Turning A Summer Night After the Spring

UNCOLLECTED POEMS

Camel Several Distiches about an Occasion Northeast October Mercy The Miner Coal Barges Rimer, Penna. On a Sacrifice of Darkness Views from the High Camp Esther The Borrowers In Winter Silence A Root Demonstration A Last Look

Chronology Note on the Texts Notes

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