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    The Nails: W. S. Merwin

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    bingkydoodle1012
    The poem describes the speaker's feelings of loss and inability to move on after a breakup. They wear their sorrow openly but cannot find a way past it. Loss offers more possibilities than being together, yet the speaker searches for what was lost, trying to recall details but finding nothing brings it back. Images of flooded trees, an endless film, and a blank end depict the emptiness. The speaker has seen glimpses of the future scars and being alone like a key without a lock. Winter will remember their past harvest but now, as the relationship ends, the speaker has no words, only a wound, to speak the truth or offer comfort.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    The Nails: W. S. Merwin

    Uploaded by

    bingkydoodle1012
    59 views2 pages
    The poem describes the speaker's feelings of loss and inability to move on after a breakup. They wear their sorrow openly but cannot find a way past it. Loss offers more possibilities than being together, yet the speaker searches for what was lost, trying to recall details but finding nothing brings it back. Images of flooded trees, an endless film, and a blank end depict the emptiness. The speaker has seen glimpses of the future scars and being alone like a key without a lock. Winter will remember their past harvest but now, as the relationship ends, the speaker has no words, only a wound, to speak the truth or offer comfort.

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    poem

    Original Title

    The Nails

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    The poem describes the speaker's feelings of loss and inability to move on after a breakup. They wear their sorrow openly but cannot find a way past it. Loss offers more possibilities than being together, yet the speaker searches for what was lost, trying to recall details but finding nothing brings it back. Images of flooded trees, an endless film, and a blank end depict the emptiness. The speaker has seen glimpses of the future scars and being alone like a key without a lock. Winter will remember their past harvest but now, as the relationship ends, the speaker has no words, only a wound, to speak the truth or offer comfort.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    59 views2 pages

    The Nails: W. S. Merwin

    Uploaded by

    bingkydoodle1012
    The poem describes the speaker's feelings of loss and inability to move on after a breakup. They wear their sorrow openly but cannot find a way past it. Loss offers more possibilities than being together, yet the speaker searches for what was lost, trying to recall details but finding nothing brings it back. Images of flooded trees, an endless film, and a blank end depict the emptiness. The speaker has seen glimpses of the future scars and being alone like a key without a lock. Winter will remember their past harvest but now, as the relationship ends, the speaker has no words, only a wound, to speak the truth or offer comfort.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 2

    The Nails

    BY W. S. MERWIN

    I gave you sorrow to hang on your wall


    Like a calendar in one color.
    I wear a torn place on my sleeve.
    It isnt as simple as that.
    Between no place of mine and no place of yours
    Youd have thought Id know the way by now
    Just from thinking it over.
    Oh I know
    Ive no excuse to be stuck here turning
    Like a mirror on a string,
    Except its hardly credible how
    It all keeps changing.
    Loss has a wider choice of directions
    Than the other thing.
    As if I had a system
    I shuffle among the lies
    Turning them over, if only
    I could be sure what Id lost.
    I uncover my footprints, I
    Poke them till the eyes open.
    They dont recall what it looked like.
    When was I using it last?
    Was it like a ring or a light
    Or the autumn pond
    Which chokes and glitters but
    Grows colder?
    It could be all in the mind. Anyway
    Nothing seems to bring it back to me.
    And Ive been to see

    Your hands as trees borne away on a flood,


    The same film over and over,
    And an old one at that, shattering its account
    To the last of the digits, and nothing
    And the blank end.
    The lightning has shown me the scars of the future.
    Ive had a long look at someone
    Alone like a key in a lock
    Without what it takes to turn.
    It isnt as simple as that.
    Winter will think back to your lit harvest
    For which there is no help, and the seed
    Of eloquence will open its wings
    When you are gone.
    But at this moment
    When the nails are kissing the fingers good-bye
    And my only
    Chance is bleeding from me,
    When my one chance is bleeding,
    For speaking either truth or comfort
    I have no more tongue than a wound.

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