Monday, December 27, 2010

Poetry day


Just a poem I like today....



Inheritance
by W. S. Merwin
At my elbow on the table

it lies open as it has done

for a good part of these thirty

years ever since my father died

and it passed into my hands

this Webster's New International

Dictionary of the English

Language of 1922

on India paper which I

was always forbidden to touch

for fear I would tear or somehow

damage its delicate pages

heavy in their binding

this color of wet sand

on which thin waves hover

when it was printed he was twenty-six

they had not been married four years

he was a country preacher

in a one-store town and I suppose

a man came to the door one day

peddling this new dictionary

on fine paper like the Bible

at an unrepeatable price

and it seemed it would represent

a distinction just to own it

confirming something about him

that he could not even name

now its cover is worn as though

it had been carried on journeys

across the mountains and deserts

of the earth but it has been here

beside me the whole time

what has frayed it like that

loosening it gnawing at it

all through these years

I know I must have used it

much more than he did but always

with care and indeed affection

turning the pages patiently

in search of meanings


"Inheritance" by W. S. Merwin, from The Shadow of Sirius. © Copper Canyon Press, 2008.

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