I have never been able to decide how I feel about M. S. Merwin’s poem “For the Anniversary of My Death.” Moved at first, I always put it back having possibly changed my mind.
I am, of course, stirred by the thought of having passed the anniversary of my own death every year without knowing it. And I do love what he does with death as that moment when “after three days of rain / Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease.” And I also appreciate everything that Pádraig Ó Tuama recently said about the poem.
As a whole, however, I’m never certain.
But whatever it is that makes me keep that poem at arms length, whatever it is that’s missing or off, those hesitations are completely gone in Gary Lawless’s poem “Some Clear Night.”
Some clear night like this,
when the stars are all out and shining,
our old dogs will come back to us,
out of the woods, and lead us
along the stone wall to the cove.
There will be foxes, and loons,
and a houseboat floating on the lake.
The trees will lean in, a lantern
swinging over the water, the creaking of oars.
Now we will learn the true names of the stars.
Now we will know what the trees are saying.
There is wood in the stove.
We left the front door open.
Does the farmhouse know
that we’re never coming back?
It’s so similar, isn’t it? Yet Lawless’s poem has so much more warmth and at-homeness. There is wood in the stove and the door is left (invitingly!) open, but it isn’t just those lines.
I came across that today in a collection of poems from Maine. A funny thing is, I’ve talked to Gary many times, always briefly, about books and authors, at his store in Brunswick.
I wonder how he’ll feel about this.