The Moving Target Quotes

“October"

I remember how I would say, “I will gather
These pieces together,
Any minute now I will make
A knife out of a cloud.”
Even then the days
Went leaving their wounds behind them,
But, “Monument,” I kept saying to the grave,
“I am still your legend.”

There was another time
When our hands met and the clocks struck
And we lived on the point of a needle, like angels.

I have seen the spider’s triumph
In the palm of my hand. Above
My grave, that thoroughfare,
There are words now that can bring
My eyes to my feet, tamed.
Beyond the trees wearing names that are not their own
The paths are growing like smoke.

The promises have gone,
Gone, gone, and they were here just now.
There is the sky where they laid their fish.
Soon it will be evening.”
― W.S. Merwin, The Moving Target

“Invocation”

The day hanging by its feet with a hole
In its voice
And the light running into the sand

Here I am once again with my dry mouth
At the fountain of thistles
Preparing to sing.”
― W.S. Merwin, The Moving Target

“Lemuel's Blessing"

Let Lemuel bless with the Wolf, which is a dog without a master, but the Lord hears his cries and feeds him in the desert.

-From “Jubilate Agno,” by Christopher Smart.

You that know the way,
Spirit,
I bless your ears, which are like cypresses on a mountain
With their roots in wisdom. Let me approach.
I bless your paws and their twenty nails, which tell their own prayer
And are like dice in command of their own combinations.
Let me not be lost.
I bless your eyes, for which I know no comparison.
Run with me like the horizon, for without you
I am no more than a dog lost and hungry,
Ill-natured, untrustworthy, useless.

My bones together bless you like an orchestra of flutes.
Divert the weapons of the settlements and lead their dogs a dance.
Where a dog is shameless and wears servility In his tail like a banner,
Let me wear the opprobrium of possessed and possessors
As a thick tail properly used
To warm my worst and my best parts. My tail and my laugh

Lead me past the error at the fork of hesitation.
Deliver me

From the ruth of the lair, which clings to me in the morning,
Painful when I move, like a trap;
Even debris has its favorite positions, but they are not yours—

From the ruth of kindness, with its licked hands;
I have sniffed baited fingers and followed
Toward necessities not my own: it would make me
An habitué of back steps, faithful custodian of fat sheep—

From the ruth of prepared comforts, with its
Habitual dishes sporting my name, and its collars and
leashes of vanity—

From the ruth of approval, with its nets, kennels; and taxidermists;
It would use my guts for its own rackets and instruments, to play its own games and music;

Teach me to recognize its platforms, which are constructed like scaffolds;
From the ruth of known paths, which would use my feet, tail, and ears as curios,
My head as a nest for tame ants,
My fate as a warning.

I have hidden at wrong times for wrong reasons.
I have been brought to bay. More than once.
Another time, if I need it,
Create a little wind like a cold finger between my shoulders,
then
Let my nails pour out a torrent of aces like grain from a threshing machine;
Let distance be nothing to me,
Fatigue, weather, habitation, the old bones, finally,
Nothing to me,
All lights but yours nothing to me.
Let the memory of tongues not unnerve me so that I stumble or quake.

But lead me at times beside the still waters;
There when I crouch to drink let me catch a glimpse of your image
Before it is obscured with my own.

Preserve my eyes, which are irreplaceable.
Preserve my heart, veins, bones
Against the slow death building in them like hornets until the place is entirely theirs.
Preserve my tongue and I will bless you again and again.

Let my ignorance and failings
Remain far behind me like tracks made in a wet season,
At the end of which I have vanished,
So that those who track me for their own twisted ends
May be rewarded only with ignorance and failings.
But let me leave my cry stretched out behind me like a road
On which I have followed you.
And sustain me for my time in the desert
On what is essential to me.

W. S. Merwin, New Yorker, December 8, 1962”
― W.S. Merwin, The Moving Target

“The light of the eyes in the house of the crow. Here the gods'
voices break and some will never sing again, but some come closer
and whisper. Never their names.

There are no hinges. One side of a door is simply forgotten in
the other.

In the windows the permissions appear, already lit, unasked, but
the wind is the wind of parsimony, and the shadows, which are
numerous and large, strain at their slender leashes. One fine day the
first knives come through the mirrors, like fins of sharks. The images
heal, but imperfectly.

We discover parts of ourselves which came to exist under this
influential sign.”
― W.S. Merwin, The Moving Target

“Air"

Naturally it is night.
Under the overturned lute with its
One string I am going my way
Which has a strange sound.

This way the dust, that way the dust.
I listen to both sides
But I keep right on.
I remember the leaves sitting in judgment
And then winter.

I remember the rain with its bundle of roads.
The rain taking all its roads.
Nowhere.

Young as I am, old as I am,

I forget tomorrow, the blind man.
I forget the life among the buried windows.
The eyes in the curtains.
The wall
Growing through the immortelles.
I forget silence
The owner of the smile.

This must be what I wanted to be doing,
Walking at night between the two deserts,
Singing.”
― W.S. Merwin, The Moving Target