W.S. Merwin | The Nation

Just before Thanksgiving in 1960, The Nation published W.S. Merwin's poem for the holiday.

This is the year
when the swallows did not come back

you have not noticed

Again again you are
the right time after all

not according to
however we planned it

Following the black
footprints the tracks
of words that have passed that way
before me I come
again and again to
your blank shore

Clear eminence without whom I would be
nothing oh great provision never seen
barely acknowledged even wished away

Here The Nation presents a few of the works posted on "Poets Against the War," (www.poetsagainstthewar.org), the website set up by Sam Hamill, poet and editor, when he called for poems and statements against war in Iraq.

The US Department of Agriculture plans to eradicate three species of fruit fly in Hawaii by spraying suspected carcinogens and mutagens on the islands.