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Small Woman on Swallow Street

By W. S. Merwin b. 1927

Four feet up, under the bruise-blue

Fingered hat-felt, the eyes begin. The sly brim

Slips over the sky, street after street, and nobody

Knows, to stop it. It will cover

The whole world, if there is time. Fifty years’

Start in gray the eyes have; you will never

Catch up to where they are, too clever

And always walking, the legs not long but

The boots big with wide smiles of darkness

Going round and round at their tops, climbing.

They are almost to the knees already, where

There should have been ankles to stop them.

So must keep walking all the time, hurry, for

The black sea is down where the toes are

And swallows and swallows all. A big coat

Can help save you. But eyes push you down; never

Meet eyes. There are hands in hands, and love

Follows its furs into shut doors; who

Shall be killed first? Do not look up there:

The wind is blowing the building-tops, and a hand

Is sneaking the whole sky another way, but

It will not escape. Do not look up. God is

On High. He can see you. You will die.

W. S. Merwin, “Small Woman on Swallow Street” 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: Poetry (March 1957).

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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