Memorandum

By W. S. Merwin b. 1927

Save these words for a while because

of something they remind you of

although you cannot remember

what that is a sense that is part

dust and part the light of morning

you were about to say a name

and it is not there I forget

them too I am learning to pray

to Perdita to whom I said

nothing at the time and now she

cannot hear me as far as I

know but the day goes on looking

the names often change more slowly

than the meanings whole families

grow up in them and then are gone

into the anonymous sky

oh Perdita does the hope go on

after the names are forgotten

and is the pain of the past done

when the calling has stopped and those

betrayals so long repeated

that they are taken for granted

as the shepherd does with the sheep

Source: The Pupil (Alfred A. Knopf, 2001)

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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