The Shadow of Sirius by W. S. Merwin

Named by The Atlantic as one of 25 collections deemed "The Best American Poetry of the 21st Century (So Far)," The Shadow of Sirius by W. S. Merwin has been such a joy to read as part of my celebration of National Poetry Month. It is lyrical and filled with imagery of the natural world, and each time I've picked it up, I've been rewarded with some new delight. Today, it was three poems in a row, each resonant -- both with each other and with my spirit at the moment. The first, "To Paula in Late Spring," captures the feeling of overwhelming gratitude and grace found in a yearslong love. The poet opens by suggesting an indifference to, or perhaps a power over, time itself: "Let me imagine that we will come again / when we want to and it will be spring / we will be no older than we ever were" but each line added to this short poem reinforces the importance of time -- that which has passed to build this beautiful relationship as well as whatever time that might still remain for them. The final lines echo with a sense of wonder at the gift of this long love: "the light will be as it is now in the garden / that we have made here these years together / of our long evenings and astonishment"

Our long evenings and astonishment. May every love be so blessed.

That poem is followed by "Youth of Grass," which had me shaking my head in awe. It is simple but deceptively nuanced, and demonstrates a flawless, rolling rhythm not unlike the grassy field of the poem's subject. The poem (which you can read in its entirety here) opens by explaining that "Yesterday in the hushed white sunlight / down along the meadows by the river / through all the bright hours they cut the first hay / of this year to leave it tossed in long rows." Not quite twice as long as "To Paula," this poem is still brief, but it feels lush and lengthy, with lines that yawn and stretch, each rolling softly into the next with no clean breaks and occasionally punctuated with a near-breathless "and" to open a new line. The final of these "and" phrases marks the turn in the poem, when Merwin shows the reader that this is not just a pastoral scene of a field of cut hay he's describing; it is also a metaphor:

and so the youth of this spring all at once is over it has come upon us again taking us once more by surprise just as we began to believe that those fields would always be green

Here, too, time is inexorably passing, a truth we know and are perpetually surprised by.

The final poem in this unmarked series is "The Silence of Mine Canaries." This poem spreads onto a second page, and though Merwin eschews formal punctuation, it is not a single long thought but a series of statements, each demonstrating the losses that time -- and human indifference -- have wrought, as seen here in the poem's final lines:

the blue tits that nested each year in the wall where their young could be heard deep in the stones by the window calling Here Here have not returned the marks of their feet are still there on the stone of their doorsill that does not know what it is missing the cuckoo has not been heard again this May nor for many a year the nightjar nor the mistle thrush song thrush whitethroat the blackcap that instructed Mendelssohn I have seen them I have stood and listened I was young they were singing of youth not knowing that they were singing for us

The whole poem stands as a rejection of the possibility that we might be like that stone doorsill "that does not know what it is missing." Only by naming it, by missing it, will we seek to bring it back. The canaries can only save us if we notice their silence and do something about it.

Some collections I gulp down; others I sip. This one has been a slow appreciation, and I'm grateful for this time spent with Merwin.