“Forgetting Clouds” — Image by kenne
Forgetting Clouds
The quiet morning has a few cloud friends
that are gone when I look for them again
in this one summer to which I have come
after everything that I remember
what can I call it before it has gone
it does not hear me and does not know me
it passes without seeing I am here
it is only me going my own way
there is no one else who can forget it
— W. S. Mervin
“W. S. Merwin, a formidable American poet who for more than 60 years labored under a formidable poetic yoke: the imperative of using language — an inescapably concrete presence on the printed page — to conjure absence, silence and nothingness, died on Friday at his home near Haiku-Pauwela, Hawaii. He was 91.” New York Times, March 15, 2019
