I Don't Know for Certain | W.S. Merwin | The New York Review of Books

Submit a letter:

I don’t know for certain but I suppose
that one day a man and a woman
love each other,
and little by little they become alone,
something in their heart tells them that they’re alone,
alone on the earth penetrating each other,
killing each other.

It all happens in silence. The way
light is made in the eye.
Love unites bodies.
They fill each other with silence.

One day they wake up, above arms;
then they think they know it all.
They see themselves naked and they know it all.

(I don’t know it for certain. I suppose it.)

W.S. Merwin

W.S. Merwin was born in New York City in 1927 and grew up in Union City, New Jersey, and in Scranton, Pennsylvania. From 1949 to 1951 he worked as a tutor in France, Portugal, and Majorca. He has since lived in many parts of the world, most recently on Maui in the Hawaiian Islands. He is the author of many books of poems, prose, and translations and has received both the Pulitzer and the Bollingen Prizes for poetry, among numerous other awards. His new poetry collection is The Moon Before Morning.

Jaime Sabines

This Issue

December 3, 1970