W.S. Merwin's "Ash"

Thoughts on remembering.

Ash

The church in the forest
was built of wood

the faithful carved their names by the doors
same names as ours

soldiers burned it down

the next church where the first had stood
was built of wood

with charcoal floors
names were written in black by the doors
same names as ours

soldiers burned it down

we have a church where the others stood
it’s made of ash
no roof no doors

nothing on earth
says it’s ours



from The Essential W.S. Merwin (Copper Canyon, 2017)

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I came across this poem by Merwin — who is, and will forever be, one of the lodestars of poetry for me — in the 2007 anthology We Begin Here: Poems for Palestine and Lebanon, edited by Kamal Boullata and Kathy Engel. It’s a beautiful anthology that is its own testament to the act of witness (which reminds me of another great anthology — Carolyn Forche’s Against Forgetting: Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness). Both books remind me that the work of poetry is in service of witness, that the work of poetry is, as Forche claims, against forgetting. Forgetting what? Forgetting, as Seema Atalla writes in one poem, that:

As I lift this fragile blue bowl,
lives shatter.

And years are gone 
like a napkin held to a flame.

To be against forgetting is to remember the lives that are shattered, as Atalla writes in this poem above, and to remember, too, as Merwin writes in today’s poem, the others who have stood in this church of ash we live in, and how they held the “same names as ours.”

In a lecture, Forche said that “poetry needs no other justification” than to be “conversant with centuries of their kind.” We write, often, to remember the ghosts of our lives, and we read, often, to encounter the ghosts of others. All of this, I think, is an act of conversation. We open a door when we open a book. The rooms of each of our lives are filled with so many people.

There’s a poem, “Things That Have Been Lost,” by Yehuda Amichai, that illustrates this notion. In it, Amichai writes:

Once my tired head fell
On my hairy chest and there I found my father's smell
Again, after many years.

My memories are like someone
Who can't go back to Czechoslovakia
Or who is afraid to return to Chile

Here, in this poem alone, Amichai uses memory to open a door to the dead (in this case, his father). Memory invites a kind of surprise that comes by way of openness. A father is found because Amichai is willing to be surprised by the possibility that his own father can return to him at any time. And then, Amichai reminds us that memories are also things that are full of hardship, and that our connection to such memories can never really leave us. If we are perpetually in a state of exile, then our memories will serve to remind us of our exile. This is poetry that reminds us — through its openness to memory — that we are linked inextricably by the very fact of loss.

Poetry does this work, too, for those of us who don’t remember. I have no memory of exile because I have not experienced it. To read poetry, then, is to encounter forms of memory I have never experienced and never will. This encounter is a profound thing if we allow it to be. It reminds me, every day, that though we do not share the same memories, we share the same world. This profundity born out of loss, this sense-making out of the pain of what makes no sense — poems provide blueprints for the impossible-to-map experiences of the often-tragedy of being human. Who here has not been adrift? Torn apart by a memory, or torn apart by searching for one? A poem says you are not the only ship out at sea. A poem says I am next to you, somewhere in the deep, searching too.

Today’s poem is a testament. It gives narrative and voice to what once was, and the fact of this poem makes it our duty — as readers — to remember. To remember the church, and the people who had our names, and the burning. To remember the second church, and the people who still had our names, and the burning once more. To remember the final church, where we stand, yes. But also, too, to remember all who stood before. Merwin’s poem is littered with cues to help us remember:

wood

with charcoal floors

names were written in black

Part of the great violence within this poem is that soldiers burn down this church even when the church itself is a testament to the memory of violence. It has charcoal floors, names seared to the building itself in the color of the aftermath of fire. And yet still: there was burning. They never stopped to read, these soldiers. They never read at all.

In part, I think Merwin’s poem today is a meditation on the distinct paradox at the heart of property — nothing on earth says it’s ours. How inconsequential and strange it is to even say you own anything when such ownership will inevitably be lost to the passing of time.

But I think, too, that the poem is — perhaps more importantly — a meditation on what the trauma of violence does to those who experience it, those who witness it, and those who come after it. The phrase nothing on earth says it’s ours could also read, within the context of this poem, nothing on earth says it once was ours. As in: the moment something is lost to the destruction of violence, it is physically lost. A building bombed in Gaza becomes rubble and air. And when that happens, we forget, I think, as witnesses, that those who have suffered such loss face not just the physical threat of their own potential dying, but also the psychic and spiritual threat of looking at a world that doesn’t look the same. They spend their whole lives, then, remembering. I think it is, in part, our duty to be witnesses to such acts of memory. And to remind ourselves that to be in a state of constant memorial is to be in a state of constant grief. Why would anyone wish such a thing for anyone? And yet, and yet, and yet. The bombs are still dropping.

Yes. As I write this, planes loaded with bombs are flying over an ocean. People are justifying war. Politicians with tens of millions of dollars from singular people with billions of dollars are trying to push against politicians whose money comes from the many people who donate five dollars, ten, twenty. I think that people with power like to talk a lot about the future, as if the future is the only thing worth existing, when, in reality, the future never exists. The thing about the past is that it does not hold us back. It keeps us together. It reminds us. It returns and returns: the out-of-nowhere feeling of your grandmother wrapping her small arms against your small body, even if she hasn’t held you in over a decade. Even if she never will again. Memory, I think, is a prerequisite for understanding what could be possible. To hold dear the ghosts of who and what you have lost is to imagine a future in which they could have lived. To imagine a future in which that kind of life — of care, and livelihood — is possible.

Merwin writes:

we have a church where the others stood
it’s made of ash

This is the first instance of the plural we in this poem, and I think it is intentional. Merwin is including us at the same time as he is imploring us. He is asking us — through this we — to remember. He is asking us to remember that one of the only truths in this world is the truth of loss. And he wants us, I think, to stand in solidarity with those who have lost rather than those who have gained. This is why those who once stood where we stand are given, in today’s poem, the same names as ours. Merwin is asking us to do what the soldiers did not: to read instead of burn. To remember instead of destroy.

I can’t help but think of our world when I think of this poem today. I can’t help but think of our infatuation with data, our reliance on metrics. I can’t help but wonder if such technology allows us to take stock of our lives, to remember history, and to fully see each other, or if such technology gives us more permission to utterly abandon such things, and live vicariously for the next nanosecond.

Our present moment, too, is geared toward forgetting. We are encouraged to live in the moment, to pay attention to the minutia of the hyper-present: heart rates and pictures that disappear in a few seconds. The truth is: our present moment feels more about this fact of disappearing than about being, really being. As our photos disappear and as the fact of other people’s existence operates on a ten second timer, one video slipping into another with hardly any blank space between where one might pause to consider, as all of this happens, so too exists the fact of other people’s disappearance — those lost to genocide, those swept up by masked ICE agents on city streets. Everything about our world disappears before our eyes, and then, instead of being offered space to mourn or think or wonder or rage, we are given another brief video to watch, another piece of content to fill the void, some mantra to insist that we live in the present rather than give us time to remember the past.

The past, it seems, becomes the past more quickly than ever these days.

And so, I think we must position ourselves against forgetting. Those with power are in the business of disappearance. And they are in the business of destruction. And then, too, they are in the business of generating a present moment filled with so much circulating (and also disappearing) content that one cannot help but forget. As both the world and so many people disappear before our eyes — the proof of which is seen and circulated on short clips that disappear, too, before our eyes — I think we have to remember. It adds up, I know. The toll of loss adds up every day. Remembering becomes hard work. I think that’s part of the point. The other point, though? Remembering the past means opening a door to let the past back in. That’s why we call it dwelling. There’s a home to be built that includes all the homes that have been lost, and all the people, too. It is large and it is full of us. Remember it.

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Some notes:

1. If you live in NYC, I have found Zohran Mamdani’s campaign for mayor to be inspiring and empowering. You can find ways to support his campaign or get information about it here. I voted early and ranked him first this week (and did not rank Andrew Cuomo).

2. My novel, Pilgrims, has a cover, a release date, and a preorder link. It’ll be out November 18th. You can preorder it here. And the cover is below. For all of this, I am wildly grateful. This novel, which tells a story of monks and brothers and dogs and bread-makers and long roads, feels like a big chunk of myself. And I’d be honored if you read it.

3. Annie Dorsen put together a spreadsheet of presses, organizations, and other institutions of the arts who have been affected by the loss of NEA funding. Here’s a helpful guide for how to support small and independent presses who have lost their funding, put together by Deep Vellum Books.

4. Here is a website — put together by volunteers — that tracks the jobs lost and lives affected by the de-funding of USAID. It’s worth reading in order to fully understand the severity of what is happening, who it is affecting, and how to help.

5. I have found that Writers Against the War on Gaza is doing great work in building solidarity and awareness and justice in this contemporary moment. You can find a list of their resources and areas of further support here.

6. Workshops 4 Gaza is an organization of writers putting together donation-based writing workshops and readings in support of Palestine and in awareness of a more just, informed, thoughtful, considerate world. You can follow them here and get more information about them here.

7. If you’ve read any of the recent newsletters, you’ve perhaps noticed that I am offering a subscription option. This is functioning as a kind of “tip jar.” If you would like to offer your monetary support as a form of generosity, please consider becoming a paid subscriber below. There is no difference in what you receive as a free or paid subscriber; to choose the latter is simply an option to exercise your generosity if you feel willing. I am grateful for you either way. Thanks for your readership.