Song of Three Smiles

By W. S. Merwin b. 1927

Let me call a ghost,

Love, so it be little:

In December we took

No thought for the weather.

Whom now shall I thank

For this wealth of water?

Your heart loves harbors

Where I am a stranger.

Where was it we lay

Needing no other

Twelve days and twelve nights

In each other’s eyes?

Or was it at Babel

And the days too small

We spoke our own tongue

Needing no other?

If a seed grow green

Set a stone upon it

That it learn thereby

Holy charity.

If you must smile

Always on that other,

Cut me from ear to ear

And we all smile together.

W. S. Merwin, “Song of Three Smiles” from The First Four Books of Poems (Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 2000). Copyright © 2000 by W. S. Merwin. Reprinted with the permission of The Wylie Agency, Inc.

Source: The First Four Books of Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 1975)

Biography

W.S. Merwin is a major American writer whose poetry, translations, and prose have won praise since W.H. Auden awarded his first book, A Mask for Janus (1952), the Yale Younger Poets Prize. Though that first book reflected the formalism of the period, Merwin eventually became known for an impersonal, open style that eschewed punctuation. Writing in the Guardian, Jay Parini described Merwin’s mature style as “his own kind of free . . .

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