Finding Beauty

Finding Beauty

" Our kinship with Earth must be maintained; otherwise, we will find ourselves 
trapped in the center of our own paved-over souls with no way out."

                                                       Terry Tempest Williams
                                                               Finding Beauty in a Broken World

I would never disagree.
I understand the world needs another weedy lot covered with satellite dishes,
signs extolling all you can eat lobster and 24-hour hamburgers. I know our cities
are sheltering atolls in the wilderness busily excreting their coral rings of big box 
stores, car lots, and airport hotels to welcome the weary traveller. And I know this 
is both proper and inevitable, who am I to stand in the way of the organic growth 
of the inorganic.

But when you have the asphalt ready for the next mini-mall. let me know so I can 
descend into the excavation past the condoms, cable lines and storm sewer 
pipes. There I will lie down among the grooves left over when the last glacier 
peeled clean the world. And let me take with me the unneeded, the unwanted, 
the dispossessed fox, the back porch skunk, fast food gulls and the crow with 
the broken beak. Cover us with the hot mess and let the world wake us
when you're done.

Guy

W. S. Merwin, Poen and Conservationist, September 30, 1927-March 16, 2019

We lost another poet, W.S. Merwin, Friday. 

I think it is safe to say he was a favourite of mine. 

I hope he has passed through the gate 

and found his friends waiting there.

For the Anniversary of My Death

W.S. Merwin

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day   

When the last fires will wave to me

And the silence will set out

Tireless traveler

Like the beam of a lightless star

Then I will no longer

Find myself in life as in a strange garment

Surprised at the earth

And the love of one woman

And the shamelessness of men

As today writing after three days of rain

Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease

And bowing not knowing to what

"I turned

uphill to come to the top gate and the last barn 

the sun still in the day and my shadow going on 

out into the upland and I saw they were milking 

it was that hour and it seemed all my friends were there 

we greeted each other and we walked back out to the gate 

talking and saw the last light and our shadows gesturing 

far out along the ridge until the darkness gathered them 

and we went on standing here believing there were other words 

we stood here talking about our lives in the autumn. " 

                                      From his poem Gate

A lovely discussion of the poem Gate can be found here at The Globe and Mail's,  How Poems Work;

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/how-poems-work/article4129599/

Links to tributes can be found here

https://www.staradvertiser.com/2019/03/16/hawaii-news/w-s-merwin-prize-winning-poet-and-ardent-naturalist-dies-in-his-maui-home/

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/15/obituaries/w-s-merwin-dead-poet-laureate.html 

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/03/15/crashing-w-s-merwins-wedding/

https://www.npr.org/2019/03/15/509122300/poet-w-s-merwin-who-was-inspired-by-conservation-dies-at-91

https://theamericanscholar.org/there-is-no-time-in-the-garden/#.XI0yoBNKi9Y

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/collections/144293/remembering-ws-merwin
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/W-S-Merwin-poet-of-austere-lyricism-who-twice-13692721.php

https://www.vogue.com/article/ws-merwin-obituary?verso=true

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/mar/15/ws-merwin-poet-laureate-dies-91