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Back W. S. Merwin

W. S. Merwin

1927–2019
W. S. Merwin in Berkeley, California, 1985. (Chris Felver/Getty Images)

Major works:
The Lice • The Carrier of Ladders • Migration • The Shadow of Sirius • “For the Anniversary of My Death” • “The Asians Dying” • “Losing a Language”

Read the poem

Looking East at Night

W. S. Merwin

Death
White hand
The moths fly at in the darkness
I took you for the moon rising
Whose light then
Do you reflect
As though it came out of the roots of things
This harvest pallor in which
I have no shadow but myself

Read a passage from Looking East at Night by W. S. Merwin

Books

W. S. Merwin: Collected Poems 1996–2011 LOA N°241
W. S. Merwin: Collected Poems 1952–1993 LOA N°240
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