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
W. S. Merwin, "In the Winter of my Thirty-Eighth Year" Copyright © 1993 by W.S. Merwin, reprinted with permission of The Wylie Agency LLC.
Source:
The Second Four Books of Poems: The Moving Target The Lice The Carriers of Ladders Writings to an Unfinished Accompaniment
(Copper Canyon Press, 1993)
