The Way to the River

The way to the river leads past the names of

Ash the sleeves the wreaths of hinges

Through the song of the bandage vendor

I lay your name by my voice

As I go

The way to the river leads past the late

Doors and the games of the children born looking backwards

They play that they are broken glass

The numbers wait in the halls and the clouds

Call

From windows

They play that they are old they are putting the horizon

Into baskets they are escaping they are

Hiding

I step over the sleepers the fires the calendars

My voice turns to you

I go past the juggler’s condemned building the hollow

Windows gallery

Of invisible presidents the same motion in them all

In a parked cab by the sealed wall the hats are playing

Sort of poker with somebody’s

Old snapshots game I don’t understand they lose

The rivers one

After the other I begin to know where I am

I am home

Be here the flies from the house of the mapmaker

Walk on our letters I can tell

And the days hang medals between us

I have lit our room with a glove of yours be

Here I turn

To your name and the hour remembers

Its one word

Now

Be here what can we

Do for the dead the footsteps full of money

I offer you what I have my

Poverty

To the city of wires I have brought home a handful

Of water I walk slowly

In front of me they are building the empty

Ages I see them reflected not for long

Be here I am no longer ashamed of time it is too brief its hands

Have no names

I have passed it I know

Oh Necessity you with the face you with

All the faces

This is written on the back of everything

But we

Will read it together

Copyright Credit: W. S. Merwin, “The Way to the River” 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)