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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
Sometimes
Proceeds
Way
Pointing
Mouth
Mouths
Came
Word
Come
Nothing
Unnamed

More quotes by 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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Every year without knowing it I have passed the day When the last fires will wave to me
W. S. Merwin
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So this is what I am Pondering his eyes that could not Conceive that I was a creature to run from I who have always believed too much in words
W. S. Merwin
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Certain words now in our knowledge we will not use again, and we will never forget them. We need them. Like the back of the picture.
W. S. Merwin
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From what we cannot hold the stars are made.
W. S. Merwin
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Your absence has gone through me
W. S. Merwin
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Poetry is a way of looking at the world for the first time.
W. S. Merwin
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come back believer in shade believer in silence and elegance believer in ferns believer in patience believer in the rain
W. S. Merwin
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Separation Your absence has gone through me Like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color.
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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The global warming is going on. These are not single cases. These are all part of a general way we've been looking at the world. As long as we look at the world that way it's going to go on. Because the idea that the important thing is for some people get rich while the rest of the people work for them is very deeply dug in...
W. S. Merwin
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I will take with me the emptiness of my hands. What you do not have you find everywhere
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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I offer you what I have my Poverty
W. S. Merwin
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I have with me all that I do not knowI have lost none of it.
W. S. Merwin
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The story of each stone leads back to a mountain.
W. S. Merwin
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You grieve Not that heaven does not exist but That it exists without us
W. S. Merwin
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We are asleep with compasses in our hands.
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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The attempt to live that way, the attempt to treat everybody - it fails all the time - but the attempt to treat people as equals is a good attempt. It's a very good attempt. And there have been very few governments that have come anywhere near it in the past. The Greeks began to, the Romans began to - they both failed.
W. S. Merwin