Because New Years is over and I still feel old

Few poets describe the act of looking back on one’s own life with as much tenderness as U.S Poet Laureate W.S. Merwin. I have come across this particular poem of his several times in the past year and each time it hits me in a way that only a poet both universally human and deeply personal could affect. -Olivia

In the Winter of My Thirty-Eighth Year

BY W. S. MERWIN

It sounds unconvincing to say When I was young

Though I have long wondered what it would be like

To be me now

No older at all it seems from here

As far from myself as ever

.

Walking in fog and rain and seeing nothing

I imagine all the clocks have died in the night

Now no one is looking I could choose my age

It would be younger I suppose so I am older

It is there at hand I could take it

Except for the things I think I would do differently

They keep coming between they are what I am

They have taught me little I did not know when I was young

.

There is nothing wrong with my age now probably

It is how I have come to it

Like a thing I kept putting off as I did my youth

.

There is nothing the matter with speech

Just because it lent itself

To my uses

.

Of course there is nothing the matter with the stars

It is my emptiness among them

While they drift farther away in the invisible morning

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