The Lice Quotes

“My words are the garment of what I shall never be
Like the tucked sleeve of a one-armed boy.”
― W.S. Merwin, The Lice: Poems

“On the door it says what to do to survive
But we were not born to survive
Only to live”
― W.S. Merwin, The Lice: Poems

“Everything that does not need you is real”
― W.S. Merwin, The Lice: Poems

“The gods are what has failed to become of us”
― W.S. Merwin, The Lice: Poems

“The Hydra calls me but I am used to it
It calls me Everybody
But I know my name and do not answer”
― W.S. Merwin, The Lice: Poems

“A long time ago the lightening was practicing
Something I thought was easy”
― W.S. Merwin, The Lice: Poems

“Looking East at Night”

Death
White hand
The moths fly at in the darkness

I took you for the moon rising

Whose light then
do you reflect

As though it came out of the roots of things
This harvest pallor in which

I have no shadow but myself”
― W.S. Merwin, The Lice: Poems

“How We Are Spared”

At midsummer before the dawn an orange light returns to the mountains
Like a great weight and the small birds cry out
And bear it up”
― W.S. Merwin, The Lice: Poems

“The sun sets in the cold without friends
Without reproaches after all it has done for us
It goes down believing in nothing
When it has gone I hear the stream running after it
It has brought its flute it is a long way”
― W.S. Merwin, The Lice: Poems