The Nails

(Thank you Miranda.)

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 isn't as simple as that.

Between no place of mine and no place of yours

You'd have thought I'd know the way by now

Just from thinking it over.

Oh I know

I've no excuse to be stuck here turning

Like a mirror on a string,

Except it's 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 I'd lost.

I uncover my footprints, I

Poke them till the eyes open.

They don't 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 I've 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.

I've had a long look at someone

Alone like a key in a lock

Without what it takes to turn.

It isn't 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.