Garden Time Av W. S. Merwin

<p>W.S. Merwin was arguably the most influential American poet of the last half-century - an artist who transfigured and reinvigorated the vision of poetry for our time. An essential voice in modern American literature, he was United States Poet Laureate in 2010-11.</p><p>Merwin composed the poems of <em>Garden Time</em> as he was losing his eyesight. When he could no longer see well enough to write, he dictated the poems to his wife, Paula. In this gorgeous, mindful and life-affirming book, he channels energy from animated sounds and memories to remind us that ''the only hope is to be the daylight''.</p><p>This late collection written in his late-80s finds him deeply immersed in reflection on the passage of time and the frailty and sustaining power of memory. Switching between past and present, he shows us a powerful and moving vision of the eternal, focusing on images of mornings, sunsets, shifting seasons, stars, birds and insects to capture the connectedness of time, space and the natural world.</p><p>In a poem about Li Po, ''now there is only the river / that was always on its own way''. In another poem he dreams that ''the same river is still here / the house is the old house and I am here in the morning / in the sunlight and the same bird is singing''. He remembers when ''dragonflies were as common as sunlight / hovering in their own days'' and recalls ''a house that had been left to its own silence / for half a century''. In a poem of wonder entitled ''Variations to the Accompaniment of a Cloud'', he writes: ''I keep looking for what has always been mine / searching for it even as I / think of leaving it.''</p>