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Summer 1956 • Vol. XVIII No. 3 • Poetry |

The Nine Days of Creation

The first day of Creation
All things, love, alone were,
Darkness the lonely creature;
Clove us then Love with good light
For two can be together,
And partly we were bright,
Each other so to look on.

The second day of Creation
But water was our body
In one place that lay;
Sundered us then Love
And part raised firm, that we
The hard sky too might have
And be both up and down.

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W. S. Merwin was appointed United States Poet Laureate by the Librarian of Congress in July 2010. He lives, writes, and gardens in Hawaii, on the island of Maui. He has spent the last thirty years planting nineteen acres with over eight hundred species of palm, creating a sustainable forest. The property has recently been turned into a conservancy, the Merwin Conservancy.

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Homecoming

By W. S. Merwin

Once only when the summer was nearly over and my own hair had been white as the days clouds for more years than I was counting I stood by the […]

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