“For the Anniversary of My Death” by W. S. Merwin

In “For the Anniversary of My Death,” American poet W.S. Merwin muses on life and his transient place in it. The poems beings,

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveler
Like the beam of a lightless star

Every year we mark, as a general human habit, events that are of significance to us individually and as a collective, such as the anniversary of births, weddings and deaths. However, a death that has not yet occurred cannot be marked, though it is of central importance in everyone’s life. The “fire” or sustaining energy of the material world will inevitably fade, leaving us with the mystery of our being, absolute as silence and precise as a beam of light travelling through time and space from a star that has already gone out.

Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth

Here Merwin flirts with the concept that consciousness and the body are not intertwined, but rather, that the body is a vessel for our essence. It is no wonder that a person, not as a body but as a “tireless traveller” housed therein, can be “surprised at the earth” during their time here.

As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what

It is the world we are in that offers keys to understanding who we are as transcendental beings. As a wren punctuates the silence after rainfall, so too does this understanding of oneself as a “tireless traveller” cut through the turmoil of life like a “beam from a lightless star.” Beyond language, culture, religion and philosophy, Merwin asserts his direct experience of the sacred when, as the wren sings the song of his own truth, he bows “not knowing to what.” This ineffability is at the core of every attempt to describe life, death and the divine; Merwin wisely leaves the most important part of this poem unsaid.

W.S. Merwin
(Credit: poetryfoundation.org)

Read the full text of “For the Anniversary of My Death.”