Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

In "History," William Stanley Merwin presents a haunting landscape of forgotten farms, pastoral beauty, and quiet decay, a setting that stands as an allegory for the erosion of memory and the passage of time. The poem moves through a series of vivid images, capturing moments of pastoral life and the subsequent neglect that comes after abandonment. As the narrator meanders through this environment, there is an ever-present tension between existence and oblivion, a tension that mimics our struggle to preserve history and memory.

The poem opens with a declaration of absence, "Only I never came back," a line that casts a long shadow over the entire narrative. The narrator describes the barnyard he left in a scene tinged with idyllic beauty. The gates are open, an owl carries a mouse home during "the milking hour," and the golden sky is alive with "the last songs of the blackbirds." Yet, it is this very beauty that the narrator turns away from, drawn instead to "the amber hill" and "the ancient road."

As he moves away from the heart of agricultural life, he passes by both "the last live farms" and "the ruined farms," their emptiness depicted through evocative images like "stones running with dark liquid" and "pastures of dead shepherds." These farms stand as monuments to life cycles, to the ebb and flow of existence, and the ruins speak not only of economic decline but also of historical and cultural erasure.

At the heart of this narrative lies a poignant image of a lost book. This book, filled with "words to remember," is taken on a journey "into a country where no one/knew the language." Here, the book serves as a metaphor for history, culture, and the memories that shape our lives. Yet it becomes "of course lost" because nobody could read "even the address/inside the cover." This sad tale of the book's loss reflects the perilous state of history itself, constantly at risk of being forgotten if there are no keepers of the cultural flame.

The poem closes with an existential reflection on the act of remembering and forgetting. "This is how we manage without them/this is how they manage/without us," says the narrator. These lines capture the dual reality of our relation with history: it shapes us as much as we shape it. And in the absence of either, life still goes on, though perhaps in a state of diminished richness.

Merwin's "History" serves as a cautionary tale about the fragility of memory and the transient nature of existence. In its mournful imagery and thematic complexity, the poem prompts us to consider the impermanence of life and the urgent need to engage with our history, less it fade into the long shadow of oblivion.

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