Tuesday Morning

     It was a dark and gloomy Tuesday morning when we received the news about Helena's death.  It left us full of sorrow.  Her widow, Jim, took it the hardest of all.  He walked around with a barren, empty attitude.  Shortly after Helena's passing away, Jim met his fate with Grim Reaper.  Our hearts were filled with even more despair. 

Toads

Philip Larkin

Why should I let the toad work
  Squat on my life?
Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork
  And drive the brute off?

Six days of the week it soils
  With its sickening poison -
Just for paying a few bills!
  That's out of proportion.

Lots of folk live on their wits:
  Lecturers, lispers,
Losels, loblolly-men, louts-
  They don't end as paupers;

Lots of folk live up lanes
  With fires in a bucket,
Eat windfalls and tinned sardines-
  they seem to like it.

Their nippers have got bare feet,
  Their unspeakable wives
Are skinny as whippets - and yet
  No one actually starves.

Ah, were I courageous enough
  To shout Stuff your pension!
But I know, all too well, that's the stuff
  That dreams are made on:

For something sufficiently toad-like
  Squats in me, too;
Its hunkers are heavy as hard luck,
  And cold as snow,

And will never allow me to blarney
  My way of getting
The fame and the girl and the money
  All at one sitting.

I don't say, one bodies the other
  One's spiritual truth;
But I do say it's hard to lose either,
  When you have both.


When I first read this I noticed the alliteration.  In the third stanza, Larkin uses a lot of L alliteration and in the seventh as well with S's.  He also uses a number of different slant rhymes. For instance, in lines 9 and 11, he uses wits and louts.  I thought this poem meant that people spend an excess amount of time working rather just to be able to afford some extra things in life.  In the fifth line Larkin writes, Six days of the week it soils, I found this to be especially true. People dedicate their lives to work and often forget to actually live for once.  I took from the last stanza that both work and money co-exist and when you have both it's hard to lose either of them.

Thanksgiving

Turkeys, stuffing, and pie
in piles that reach the sky.
Yams, beans, and rolls
overflow in their bowls.

Pumpkin Pie,
Green bean Casserole,
Apple Pie,
Hash brown Casserole,
Pecan Pie,
Broccoli Casserole,

So much food to my delight,
too bad I can't take another bite.

Ethics

Linda Pastan

In ethics class so many years ago

our teacher asked this question every fall:
If there were a fire in a museum
which would you save, a Rembrandt painting
or an old woman who hadn't many
years left anyhow? Restless on hard chairs
caring little for pictures or old age
we'd opt one year for life, the next for art
and always half-heartedly. Sometimes
the woman borrowed my grandmother's face

leaving her usual kitchen to wander

some drafty, half imagined museum.

One year, feeling clever, I replied

why not let the woman decide herself?

Linda, the teacher would report, eschews
the burdens of responsibility.

This fall in a real museum I stand

before a real Rembrandt, old woman,

or nearly so, myself. The colors

within this frame are darker than autumn,

darker even than winter—the browns of earth,

though earth's most radiant elements burn

through the canvas. I know now that woman
and painting and season are almost one

and all beyond saving by children.

Linda Pastan was born in New York on the 27th of May in 1932.  She is currently living in Maryland.  She has twelve poetry books published.

     In lines three through six, Pastan states the question her Ethics teacher would always ask.  The question is if there were a fire in a museum which would you save, a Rembrandt painting or an old woman who hadn't many years left anyhow? 
 

Above are some of Rembrandt's paintings.  I couldn't find how much his paintings are worth because they aren't for sale, but what I did find was his paintings would be well over a couple hundred million dollars.  If I was asked that question my answer would be the old lady.  I would choose her because even though a painting is worth more money than I'd probably ever see, a life is priceless.  In lines 13 through 14, Paston answers the question by asking why the old woman can't choose for herself.  Her teacher then explains that then she would be running away from her responsibilty to decide.  When she is older, she's in a museum standing before a Rembrandt and she realizes that a kid would choose to save an old woman simply because it's the right thing to do. 

A Study of Reading Habits

Philip Larkin

When getting my nose in a book
Cured most things short of school,
It was worth ruining my eyes
To know I could still keep cool,
And deal out the old right hook
To dirty dogs twice my size.

Later, with inch-thick specs,
Evil was just my lark:
Me and my coat and fangs
Had ripping times in the dark.
The women I clubbed with sex!
I broke them up like meringues.

Don't read much now: the dude
Who lets the girl down before
The hero arrives, the chap
Who's yellow and keeps the store
Seem far too familiar. Get stewed:
Books are a load of crap.

 

 

  I interpreted the first stanza as using books as an escape from life's dilemmas.  I also took from this stanza that Larkin used books to learn how to deal with problems.  The second stanza I visualized Larkin as a teenager, rather than a kid like I did in the previous stanza.  In line seven, when he says, with inch-thick specs, this goes back to line three.  Larkin read books so much throughout his childhood he needed glasses by the time he was a teenager.  The third stanza represents Larkin as an adult.  I thought it was funny because Larkin is now the opposite. He doesn't read anymore or go to books for solutions.  He got too bored of the same general themes.  In line seventeen, when he says, get stewed, I did some researching and found out it means to use drugs or alcohol as his escape, instead of books.  The last line is my favorite because you don't expect it, especially how much he loves books in the beginning.  I liked this poem because it is very humorous and different.  It's also not about death, which is a first. :)

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
  

 The first line, One must have a mind of winter, I took as the mind is dead.  When I think of winter, cold and dead trees first come to my mind.  Then in lines two and three, Stevens goes on to talk about how we don't see the beauty winter contains.  In the second stanza, Stevens repeats the idea in the first stanza of how people don't apppreciate winter. In the next stanza, he talks about some reasons why somebody might not appreciate winter.  In the fourth stanza, he talks about how bare winter can be.  The last stanza I think "the listener" is being referred to as the snowman.  The last line is my favorite because I took it as even though it may appear as if there's nothing there, there is always something.

I'm taking this week off.  Hope you had a great weekend!

The Coming of Wisdom with Time

William Butler Yeats

though leaves are many, the root is one;

Through all the lying days of my youth

I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;

Now I may wither into the truth.

     Although it's a short poem, it definitely doesn't lack any meaning.  The picture of the tree (on the right) is the visual image I had while reading the poem.  I interpreted the first line as Yeats comparing himself to a tree.  As a tree grows, it loses leaves but, in time, grows new ones.  The same is comparable to a person.  As a person grows, they gain new thoughts, ideas, or wisdom.  In both cases, they are still either a tree or person, but with change.  The second and third lines are about childhood and how carefree children live.  As a child, you would go with the flow or in this case, the breeze.  In the last line, I believed Yeats is saying wisdom and truth will eventually destroy you. 

A Work of Artifice

Marge Piercy

The bonsai tree

in the attractive pot

could have grown eighty feet tall

on the side of the mountain

till split by lightning.

But a gardener

carefully pruned it.
It is nine inches high.

Every day as he

whittles back the branches
the gardener croons,

It is your nature

to be small and cozy,

domestic and weak;

how lucky, little tree,
to have a pot to grow in.
With living creatures

one must begin very early

to dwarf their growth:

the bound feet,

the crippled brain,

the hair in curlers

the hands you

love to touch.

     Marge Piercy was born March 31, 1936 in Detroit.  She lived through the depression and was deeply affected by it.  She was the first person in her family to attend college.  Her poetry often addresses feminist and social issues. 

     Bonsai is a Japanese art form using miniature trees grown in containers.  This tradition dates back thousands of years. 

     Although Piercy was clearly talking about Bonsai trees, I saw a deeper meaning in the poem.  I think that she is saying we, as people, have so much potential but it is never put to use.  The third line of the poem really stood out to me.  She says could have grown eighty feet tall, which is referring to the tree.  Her word choice is what really struck me.  Piercy uses the words could have, as in the tree had the potential to be something great and magnificent. It goes on to say how a gardener kept it at nine inches tall and from reaching its true potential.  I compared this to humans.  We are all capable of achieving great things, but we are not brought up to our full potential.  Lines 20 through 24 I didn't quite understand.  In line 20, it thought of foot binding, which was used in Chinese culture, but I'm not sure if I'm on the right path there or not...

The Great Gatsby

     Overall, I really enjoyed reading the book.  Fitzgerald's style of writing was very straightforward and relaxed, which made it a lot easier to read than "Heart of Darkness".  I also found the plot never dull or boring.
     A quick summary of the book is Nick moves to New York for the summer and there he meets his neighbor, Jay Gatsby.  Nick's cousin, Daisy Buchanan, lives in East Egg with her husband, Tom.  East Egg is where people with "old money" lives, and West Egg is for people with "new money".  Through Daisy, Nick meets Jordan Baker and they develop a relationship.  Tom is having an affair on Daisy with Myrtle Wilson.  Gatsby tells Nick that he is deeply in love with Daisy.  It's kinda one big soap opera, but with a deeper meaning behind it all.  Upon Gatsby's request, Nick sets up a reunion for Gatsby and Daisy, but that didn't turn out as anticipated.  After awhile, Tom realizes Gatsby's love for Daisy, and is furious.  He then tells Daisy that Gatsby is a criminal.  Tom then confronts Gatsby in a hotel room with Daisy there and Daisy realizes she is stuck with Tom.  Tom sends Gatsby and Daisy back to East Egg from the city to prove Gatsby can't hurt him.  On the way back, with Daisy driving the car, she hits and kills Myrtle.  Myrtle's husband, who thinks it was Gatsby that killed his wife, hunts him down and kills him.  Nick has a funeral for Gatsby, breaks up with Jordan, and leaves New York.  Pretty crazy stuff, but it kept me entertained for the most part. 
     The most interesting character to me would have to be Jay Gatsby.  I choose him because he's so mysterious and very crucial to the story.  Gatsby is the protagonist and one of the main characters in "The Great Gatsby".  Gatsby had a "false pursuit of happiness".  What I mean by that is he was throwing the parties and lived such a lavish lifestyles for all the wrong reasons.  He was only trying to win Daisy's love, and he believed if he did that then he would be happy.  I personally would disagree with him because you should find happiness within yourself, not others. 
     One of the themes that I found very interesting was the hollowness in the upper class.  I can relate this to my time period, with the moral less celebrities.  In "The Great Gatsby", Fitzgerald portrays West Egg as having gaudy taste, being vulgar, and lacking morals.   
    

Heart of Darkness

     Initially, I wasn't too impressed with Heart of Darkness, but as I kept flipping through the pages, it grew on me.  Although it still isn't my favorite book of all time, I definitely have a great appreciation for this work of literature.  Conrad's extensive use of challenging vocabulary was difficult to get accustom to at first, as well as his lengthy sentences.  I would quite often catch myself having to reread a page two or three times before I was able to decipher what Conrad's point was. 
     The first chapter was the longest to get through, especially when you consider it's just about half of the book.  It starts out with the narrator on board the Nellie on the Thames River.  This is where he meets Marlow and his story begins.   
     Throughout the book I noticed a lot of unnecessary violence and cruelty.  Conrad definitely choose a fitting title for the book.  I noticed that as Marlow's story progressed, he became more accustomed to the evil of mankind and it was starting to change him.  When Marlow was first introduced to the indecency of men at the station.  They had enslaved the natives because they were too lazy to do their own jobs.  Marlow was astonished by this and that the natives were dying everywhere around him while the white men did nothing to try and save them.  Later on in the book, after Marlow finds Kurtz, he sees the heads on sticks.  Marlow reacts to this as if it wasn't a big deal at all. 
     Conrad also uses light and dark as symbols.  On the contrary to popular usage, light doesn't resemble purity or good.  A reoccurring event in the book is the light would always bring out the darkness.  Examples of this is the white ivory, the fog, and even the white men. 
     "The horror! The horror!",  Kurtz's last words before he died.  I interpreted this as the horrors that lies within our self and there is no escape possible. 
    I definitely won't say I'm never ever going to read this book again, because someday I probably will.  It just isn't on the top of my list to reread.  The reason why I think I would read it again is because I will understand more of what's going on and be able to pick up on more symbols or foreshadowing, making it more enjoyable.

I, Too, Sing America

I, Too, Sing America

Langston Hughes

I, too, sing America

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong.

Tomorrow,

I'll be at the table

When company comes.

Nobody'll dare

Say to me,

"Eat in the kitchen,"

Then.

Besides,

They'll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed--

I, too, am America.

     I love this poem! A little background knowledge on Langston Hughes is he best known for his work throughout the Harlem Renaissance.  Along with being a poet, Hughes was a novelist, playwright, short story writer, and columnist. 

     In line two, when he says, I am the darker brother, it reminds me of chicken, for some peculiar reason.  Although this may seem very random and out there, it makes sense if you think about it.  Chickens have white and dark meat, but it is still just one chicken.  People can be white or black, but we are all still one family.  In line eight, when he says, tomorrow, it gives hope for a change.  That is my one of my favorite lines in the poem because that's what America is about, hope and having your dreams come true.  The rest of that stanza is about having the strength and courage to fight for your dreams and be able to cope with whatever the outcome may be.  In the next stanza, it's a little depressing.  His white brothers will realize he is just like them, but they are ashamed of the fact.  In the last line, Hughes says, I, too, am America. I think that this is the most crucial line in the poem because he is telling everybody that he, along with everybody else in this country, is American no matter what their background is.

Still Memory

The dream was so deep
the bed came unroped from its moorings,
drifted upstream till it found my old notch

in the house I grew up in,
then it locked in place.
A light in the hall—

my father in the doorway, not dead,
just home from the graveyard shift
smelling of crude oil and solvent.

In the kitchen, Mother rummages through silver
while the boiled water poured
in the battered old drip pot

unleashes coffee’s smoky odor.
Outside, the mimosa fronds, closed all night,
open their narrow valleys for dew.

Around us, the town is just growing animate,
its pulleys and levers set in motion.
My house starts to throb in its old socket.

My twelve-year-old sister steps fast
because the bathroom tiles
are cold and we have no heat other

than what our bodies can carry.
My parents are not yet born each
into a small urn of ash.

My ten-year-old hand reaches
for a pen to record it all
as would become long habit.

—Mary Karr

     This poem can be interpreted in many different ways.  The way I choose to was that Karr was in a dream about her childhood.  In the first stanza, she is describing how she entered the dream.  She compares her bed to a boat in lines two and three.  In the third line she says her bed drifted upstream, and normally things drift downstream.  I took this as she was going upstream because she was visiting her past, which she has already "sailed" by in life.  In the next stanza, Karr says where her dream took her.  It was her house she lived in as a child.  The following stanzas go on to describe her memories.  You can conclude that her family was poor.  In lines 23 and 24, she implies that her parents died later on in her life.  In the last stanza, she writes down her memories because she doesn't want to forget them and so she can revisit them later. Overall, I liked this poem.  I could really connect to it because I've had dreams that have reminded me of old memories.

Third World Country- Allegory

     Nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to encounter.  Not any books, maps, or lectures, just the experience I was about to gain.  I packed my bags, said my goodbyes, and left for my four year voyage to a third world country.
     When I arrived, I knew the myths about these savages were true.  They had these strange rituals, piercings, tattoos, and experimented with some dangerous things.  The leaders treated us like like slaves, working us day and night.  I just went through the motions, becoming numb inside and out.  The living conditions were harsh.  It was always too hot or too cold, from one extreme to the other.  The entire system was corrupt.  It was all a game to somebody, and we were all just the puppets.  We were turned into lifeless forms, without any will or say in anything.  After some time in this horrid country, I was becoming more and more brainwashed.  I began conforming into their society, and before I knew it, I was one of them.  To make matters even worse, death was always lurking around us.  We eventually became numb from any pain and dealt with our losses.  We also became numb from any happiness.
     As I arrived near the end of my journey, everybody has changed in someway or another.  We won't leave with as many as we first started with, but we will all leave as corrupt as the country we lived in. 

1943

1943

Donald Hall

They toughened us for war. In the high-school auditorium

Ed Monahan knocked out Dominick Esposito in the first round

of the heavyweight finals, and ten months later Dom died

in the third wave at Tarawa.  Every morning of the war

our Brock-Hall Dairy delivered milk from horse-drawn wagons

to wooden back porches in southern Connecticut. In winter,

frozen cream lifted the cardboard lids of glass bottles,

Grade A or Grade B, while marines bled to death in the surf,

or the right engine faltered into Channel silt, or troops marched

--what could we do?--with frostbitten feet as white as milk.

     Donald Hall was born in 1928, and lived throughout World War II.  His poem, 1943, was written at the end of WWII.  Although he wrote a poem about the war, Hall was did not fight in it.

     In the first stanza, Hall is describing how life was on the home front.  When he transitions to the second stanza, he shows how quickly life can change.  One day you can be having a care free time, and the next you can be fighting for your life.  In lines four through eight, Hall is back to describing life on the home front.  He is describing how every morning milk is delivered to the homes.  He then goes on to tell how soldiers are dying.  I believe Hall is trying to say that the people at home aren't sacrificing anything and still have the everyday luxuries, such as milk.  Meanwhile, soldiers are dying on the battlefield and are half frozen to death.  In the last line, he asks, what could we do? By this, Hall is acknowledging that they know there is a problem, but they don't know what they can do about it.   

My Fear

My Fear

Lawrence Raab

He follows us, he keeps track,

Each day his lists are longer,

Here, death, and here,

something like it.

Mr. Fear, we say in our dreams,

what do you have for me tonight?

And he looks through his sack,

his black sack of troubles.

Maybe he smiles when he finds

the right one. Maybe he's sorry.

Tell me, Mr. Fear,

what must I carry

away from your dream.

Make it small, please.

Let it fit in my pocket,

let it fall through

the hole in my pocket.

Fear, let me have

a small brown bat

and a purse of crickets

like the ones I heard

singing last night

out there in the stubbly field

before I slept, and met you.

     I think that everybody can relate to this poem.  My reasoning behind this is the fact that everybody has some sort of fear.  In the first stanza, Raab describes fear, but doesn't mention what it is yet.  In lines three and four, he is comparing fear to death.  In the next stanza, Raab introduces fear, but he personifies it.  Lines seven and eight are my favorite in the poem.  I took it as you don't get to choose what your afraid of, but what ever it is it's going to cause trouble.  In stanza three, he is talking about how fear feels, if he's truly dark and evil or if he feels guilty.  Stanza four is like somebody talking to fear, asking him not to give them a really big fear.  They want a fear that is small and can be hidden.  The last two stanzas I took it as a way to overcome fear.  In some Asian cultures, crickets are considered to be good luck.  If he had a bat and some good luck, he'll be able to overcome his fear and live life the way he had before fear had consumed him.

Blackberries for Amelia

Blackberries for Amelia

Richard Wilbur

Fringing the woods, the stone walls, and the lanes,

Old thickets everywhere have come alive,
Their new leaves reaching out in fans of five
From tangles overarched by this year's canes.

They have their flowers, too, it being June,
And here or there in brambled dark-and-light
Are small, five-petalled blooms of chalky white,
As random-clustered and as loosely strewn

As the far stars, of which we are now told
That ever faster do they bolt away,
And that a night may come in which, some say,
We shall have only blackness to behold.

I have no time for any change so great,
But I shall see the August weather spur
Berries to ripen where the flowers were --
Dark berries, savage-sweet and worth the wait --

And there will come the moment to be quick
And save some from the birds,and I shall need
Two pails, old clothes in which to stain and bleed,
And a grandchild to talk with while we pick.
 
     This poem has a very specific rhyme scheme of ABBA.  Every stanza follows this pattern and there are five stanzas with four lines each.
     In the first two stanzas, Wilbur is describing the blackberry bushes.  The first line is referring to them looking in different places for the blackberries.  The second through fourth lines are saying how the bushes are becoming alive and new again.  The second stanza, Wilbur is describing the flowers of the blackberry bushes. I wasn't sure what a blackberry bush looked like, so I found a picture of one and it makes the second stanza make a lot more sense.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The third stanza is where it gets a deeper meaning.  He is now talking about the stars and how someday, they might disappear.  I did a little background research on the poem, and Wilbur wrote it about his granddaughter because they picked blackberries together.  Wilbur compares the flowers to the stars in lines 8 and 9.  When he is talking about the stars disappearing, part of that is also the flowers disappearing.  I took this as someday he won't pick blackberries with his granddaughter anymore.  In the fourth stanza, Wilbur is talking about change.  Line 13 says, "I have no time for any change so great". I think he is saying he doesn't want to waste his time worrying about what could happen.  In lines 14 through 16, he's talking about how over time, the bushes change.  The flowers disappeared, but blackberries came in their place.  He is talking about how even though things changed, they changed for the better.  The last stanza is saying to live life in the moment and enjoy it to the fullest with the people you care most about. 
     I like this poem because I believe in what Wilbur was saying.  Life is better fulfilled when you aren't always worrying about the future, but instead, enjoying it in the moment. 

Wallflowers

Wallflowers

Donna Vorrey

I heard a word today I'd never heard before-

I wondered where it had been all my life.

I welcomed it, wooed it with my pen,

let it know it was loved.

They say if you use a word three times, it's yours.

What happens to ones that no one speaks?

Do they wait bitterly,

hollow-eyed orphans in Dickensian bedrooms,

longing for someone to say,

"yes, you...you're the one"?

Or do they wait patiently, shy shadows

at the high school dance,

knowing that, given the slightest chance,

someday they'll bloom?

I want to make room for all of them,

to be the Ellis Island of diction-

give me your tired, your poor,

your gegenshein, your zooanthropy-

all those words without a home,

come out and play--live in my poem.

   I really liked this poem because of it's diversity and it has a spin on the way you look at words.  It makes you think about how there is vast amount of words in existence.  In the first stanza, Vorrey is saying she learned a new word that she had never known before.  She was willing to learn it and use it.  The second stanza is about how you can make a word yours.  Even though this stanza was two lines, it was my favorite.  I especially liked the fifth line.  I took it as if you use any word at least three times, then you will make it your own.  Since the word becomes yours, you will never forget it, making you that much more smarter.  In the third and fourth stanzas, she is talking about how the words have feelings.  In the third stanza, the words have feelings of fury and vengeance but in the fourth stanza, the words have feelings of dejection and dismay.  In line 8, the "Dickensian bedrooms" Morrey was referring to the work of Charles Dickens.  He wrote books about poverty and social injustice.  By "Dickensian bedrooms", I believe Morrey was talking about orphanages and how the words don't belong to anybody.  The fourth stanza is another possibilty of how the words feel when they are waiting.  The words are more gentle and bashful.  Both the third and fourth stanzas end with a glimpse of hope for the words, but they also both end in a question mark.  The fifth, and final stanza is about how she would take all the words in.  She makes a reference to Ellis Island, but instead of taking in all the immigrants, she would make a home for all the words.  In line 18, she uses the words gegenshein and zoanthropy.  These are both words that most people never heard of or don't ever use. A gegenshein is a faint brightening of the night sky in the region of the antisolar point.  Zoanthropy is a mental disorder in which a person imagines that he or she is a beast.  I never have heard of these words until I read this poem, and after I researched what they mean, I wonder why she choose these words, beside the fact they are rarely used.  In the last line, she invites all the homeless words to live in her poem, and to have a home.  The poem is broken down into five stanzas, but there isn't a pattern in how many lines each one has.  There wasn't a rhyme scheme either in the poem.  Most of the poem has monosyllabic words.  I think Morrey did this to show how people generally use the same basic words, over and over again.  She personifies the words in the poem.  She gave them feelings, and acted if they were really orphans waiting for a place to belong.

To Myself

To Myself

W.S. Merwin

Even when I forget you

I go on looking for you

I believe I would know you

I keep remembering you

sometimes long ago but then

other times I am sure you

were here a moment  before

and the air is still alive

around where you were and I

think then I can recognize

you who are always the same

who pretend to be time but

you are not time and who speak

in the words but you are not

what they say you who are not

lost when I do not find you

When I read this poem, I first thought it was about missing somebody. Another idea that came to mind was searching for a soul mate.  He knows what he is looking for, but is just waiting for her to come.  As I read it for the second time, keeping the title in mind, I realized that instead of  searching for or missing somebody, it was about missing yourself.  I like this poem because it is symbolic of how you can change into a completely different person with time.  In the first part of the poem he is talking about the past and how it is always with you.  The last lines of the poem are saying that even if I'm not looking for my past doesn't mean it's lost. 

In line three, Merwin says I believe I would know you. When he says this I think he was referring to himself in the past.  My reasoning behind this is because he would know himself earlier in his life.  In lines 6 and 7 he says, I am sure you were here a moment before.  This is another example of why I believe he was remembering himself.  A real life example is when you do or say something that you would have when you were a kid.  Even though you aren't a kid anymore and lost the mentality of a child, you can still have moments where the kid in you comes out.