"The Wings of Daylight" by W. S. Merwin

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend September 30, 2017   The Wings of Daylight   W. S. Merwin

Brightness appears showing us everything it reveals the splendors it calls everything but shows it to each of us alone and only once and only to look at not to touch or hold in our shadows what we see is never what we touch what we take turns out to be something else what we see that one time departs untouched while other shadows gather around us the world's shadows mingle with our own we had forgotten them but they know us they remember us as we always were they were at home here before the first came everything will leave us except the shadows but the shadows carry the whole story at first daybreak they open their long wings            W. S. Merwin, "The Wings of Daylight" from Garden Time. Copyright © 2016 by W. S. Merwin. About This Poem   "The Wings of Daylight" originally appeared in Garden Time (Copper Canyon Press, 2016). The state of Hawaii issued a Gubernatorial Proclamation proclaiming September 30, 2017, as "W. S. Merwin Day" in Hawaii.   William Stanley Merwin was born in New York City on September 30, 1927. He has published more than twenty poetry collections, including The Carrier of Ladders (Atheneum, 1971) and The Shadow of Sirius (Copper Canyon Press, 2009), both of which were awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. He lives in Hawaii. Poetry by Merwin   The Essential W. S. Merwin (Copper Canyon Press, 2017) "Here is what the mind does" by Fred Marchant "Losing It" by Margaret Gibson "from It's Time" by Frank Sherlock Poem-a-Day   If you value Poem-a-Day, please consider a monthly donation or one-time gift to help make it possible. Poem-a-Day is the only digital series publishing new, previously unpublished work by today's poets each weekday morning. The free series, which also features a curated selection of classic poems on weekends, reaches 450,000+ readers daily. Thank you! Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038