I confess to a huge crush on W.S. Merwin, begun long before I met him at a Nimrod Literary Journal weekend. His work is amazing. He’s a Buddhist from way back. And he’s trying very hard to restore & save a palm forest on Maui. Not to mention he’s just a lovely person, when you meet him. Brilliant, wryly witty, contemplative. He seems particularly appropriate for Earth Day, poetry month, and a Buddhist blog.
Icing on the cake for me: Merwin met Ezra Pound, a literary hero of mine. He sat with Pound at St. Elizabeth’s, where Pound was institutionalised. And I sat w/ Merwin at Nimrod. 🙂 That felt as much like being part of a literary tradition as anything I’ve had the good luck to enjoy.
And finally — today’s poem has bees in it! Here’s ‘The River of Bees” by W.S. Merwin:
The River of Bees
In a dream I returned to the river of bees
Five orange trees by the bridge and
Beside two mills my house
Into whose courtyard a blind man followed
The goats and stood singing
Of what was older
Soon it will be fifteen years
He was old he will have fallen into his eyes
I took my eyes
A long way to the calenders
Room after room asking how shall I live
One of the ends is made of streets
One man processions carry through it
Empty bottles their
Images of hope
It was offered to me by name
Once once and once
In the same city I was born
Asking what shall I say
He will have fallen into his mouth
Men think they are better than grass
I return to his voice rising like a forkful of hay
He was old he is not real nothing is real
Nor the noise of death drawing water
We are the echo of the future
On the door it says what to do to survive
But we were not born to survive
Only to live
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