In Memoriam: W.S. Merwin

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.

NYT

the setting of a poet like the moon

rising above scrappy mounds of life

finds lumps to take to heaven

or hell

but never leaves them unturned

unexamined

or untainted

when the blood of a poet turns grey

and cold as moon worms

the work is only beginning

and will not end 

until the last ember

of the sun goes out --

and even then

even then

an echo may float up

from the buried deeps