The Animals

By W. S. Merwin b. 1927

All these years behind windows

With blind crosses sweeping the tables

And myself tracking over empty ground

Animals I never saw

I with no voice

Remembering names to invent for them

Will any come back will one

Saying yes

Saying look carefully yes

We will meet again

W. S. Merwin, “The Animals” from The Second Four Books of Poems (Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 1993). Copyright © 1993 by W. S. Merwin. Reprinted with the permission of The Wylie Agency, Inc.

Source: The Second Four Books of Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 1993)

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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