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To say what or where we came from has nothing to do with what or where we came from. We do not come from there any more, but only from each word that proceeds out of the mouth of the unnamed. And yet sometimes it is our only way of pointing to who we are.

W. S. Merwin

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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
Come
Nothing
Unnamed
Sometimes
Proceeds
Way
Pointing
Mouth
Mouths
Came
Word

More quotes by W. S. Merwin

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What I really believe is the only hopeful relation between our life and the whole of life is one of reverence and respect and of feeling at one with it. The other attitude which is the one our society is based on is devastating and it is killing the earth and it is killing us too.
W. S. Merwin
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My words are the garment of what I shall never be Like the tucked sleeve of a one-armed boy.
W. S. Merwin
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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
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After an age of leaves and feathers someone dead thought of the mountain as money and cut the trees that were here and the wind and the rain at night. It is hard to say it.
W. S. Merwin
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We are not born to survive. Only to live.
W. S. Merwin
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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
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I needed my mistakes in their order to get me here
W. S. Merwin
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But most love poetry is awful nobody knows how to write good love poetry either. But that's not a reason not to write love poetry. Some of the best poetry ever written has been love poetry, and some of the greatest poetry ever written has been political poetry.
W. S. Merwin
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I wouldn't be happy about being considered a love poet or an environmental - I don't want any of those tags.
W. S. Merwin
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From what we cannot hold the stars are made.
W. S. Merwin
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Sitting over words Very late I have heard a kind of whispered sighing Not far Like a night wind in pines or like the sea in the dark The echo of everything that has ever Been spoken Still spinning its one syllable Between the earth and silence.
W. S. Merwin
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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
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I offer you what I have my Poverty
W. S. Merwin
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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
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If you can't bear what's happening to the natural world, if you can't bear the way we treat each other if you can't bear wars, you just can't bear the whole idea of war, which is possibly unavoidable. But still, you resist it. Because you just hate our treating each other that way and causing that suffering.
W. S. Merwin
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We are the echo of the future.
W. S. Merwin
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What you remember saves you.
W. S. Merwin
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We are asleep with compasses in our hands.
W. S. Merwin
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The moment we turn over the soil we start poisoning it and we go on poisoning it all the way through... and there's probably not a river in the United States that doesn't have pesticide poisoning in it. The fish are dying. The seas are getting polluted. All of these things are happening. The rain forests are going. That's what the context is.
W. S. Merwin
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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