“UtteranceSitting over wordsVery late I have heard a kind of whispered sighingNot farLike a night wind in pines or like the sea in the darkThe echo of everything that has everBeen spokenStill spinning its one syllableBetween the earth and silence”
— W.S. Merwin“My words are the garment of what I shall never be Like the tucked sleeve of a one-armed boy.”
— W.S. Merwin“Modern poetry, for me, began not in English at all but in Spanish, in the poems of Lorca.”
— W.S. Merwin“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”
— W.S. Merwin