W.S. Merwin - Two Poems
April
When we have gone the stone will stop singing April April Sinks through the sand of names Days to come With no stars hidden in them You that can wait being there You that lose nothing Know nothing
Separation
Your absence has gone through me Like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color.
William Stanley Merwin was U.S. Poet Laureate twice in his career. Needless to say, his ability with words was well-recognized. His early work leaned heavily into form but he soon abandoned it in favor of freeverse. This is where he found his strength. Vivid images and, as a result, equally vivid emotions became a hallmark of his work. But I like looking for remnants of the form in his later pieces. That’s one of my favorite things about April.
There is some interesting ghost meter in the first half of the poem. The opening line is 5 iambic feet. The next two stanzas, each a couplet, are composed of 10 syllables. I like to imagine that W.S. wrote a similarly 5 footed line and split it for tone and pacing. As the poem shifts from descriptive to direct, the syllable spread changes. The brevity helps to stop us and forces us to step back and reexamine what we’ve read. The feeling is clear. There is nothingness. The end of everything. April, the month of nature’s rebirth, slips through the barren sands.
Meanwhile, in Separation, W.S. Merwin might have come up with the best description of the feeling of missing someone. Simple. Heartbreaking. Powerful. I don’t have much to say about the piece that it doesn’t say itself I just really thought you should know it if you didn’t already.