Quote

I say to my breath once again, little breath come from in front of me, go away behind me, row me quietly now, as far as you can, for I am an abyss that I am trying to cross.

W. S. Merwin

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

W. S. Merwin
Age: 91 †
Born: 1927
Born: September 30
Died: 2019
Died: March 15
Poet
Translator
Writer
New York City
New York
William Stanley Merwin
Away
Breath
Littles
Breaths
Little
Cross
Come
Crosses
Trying
Fronts
Front
Behinds
Abyss
Behind
Quietly

More quotes by W. S. Merwin

Image
Poetry is like making a joke. If you get one word wrong at the end of a joke, you've lost the whole thing.
W. S. Merwin
Image
Your absence has gone through me
W. S. Merwin
Image
I offer you what I have my Poverty
W. S. Merwin
Image
I have with me all that I do not knowI have lost none of it.
W. S. Merwin
Image
If there'd been a better-balanced society, where there were other ways of making a decent living, I think it might have been different. That's not the way this setup work.
W. S. Merwin
Image
come back believer in shade believer in silence and elegance believer in ferns believer in patience believer in the rain
W. S. Merwin
Image
We are asleep with compasses in our hands.
W. S. Merwin
Image
When a poem is really finished, you can't change anything. You can't move words around. You can't say, 'In other words, you mean.' No, that's not it. There are no other words in which you mean it. This is it.
W. S. Merwin
Image
I needed my mistakes in their order to get me here
W. S. Merwin
Image
Of course there is nothing the matter with the stars It is my emptiness among them While they drift farther away in the invisible morning
W. S. Merwin
Image
I have been younger in October than in all the months of spring.
W. S. Merwin
Image
We're losing a species every few seconds. We cannot put them back. If we change our mind and say, 'Oops, we made a mistake' - it's too late. This is the world we live with.
W. S. Merwin
Image
Through all of youth I was looking for you without knowing what I was looking for
W. S. Merwin
Image
I also think that life itself is both indifferent to us and the source of all of our joys and everything that we love. And it's necessary to accept the one in order to love the other.
W. S. Merwin
Image
we travel far and fast and as we pass through we forget where we have been
W. S. Merwin
Image
This is what I have heard at last the wind in December lashing the old trees with rain unseen rain racing along the tiles under the moon wind rising and falling wind with many clouds trees in the night wind.
W. S. Merwin
Image
You grieve Not that heaven does not exist but That it exists without us
W. S. Merwin
Image
What you remember saves you.
W. S. Merwin
Image
The story of each stone leads back to a mountain.
W. S. Merwin
Image
I will take with me the emptiness of my hands. What you do not have you find everywhere
W. S. Merwin