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.