It is Monday, the first day of October, warm even for Mill Valley, never mind Amherst or Wonalancet or Vikersund. Autumn stands in glorious colors outside my window - weeping willow, maple and birch. The air is almost still and fragrant. Too much moving about in recent weeks, so a slow idle Monday afternoon, listening to the gift of Richard Stoltzman's clarinet and musing on W.S. Merwin's poem "To Monday."
Merwin is addressing the day, Monday, as if the day, and time itself, is remembering and not remembering the beginning, the time that is Monday, recognizing and forgetting itself, "as though...," that repeated phrase, imagination at play, needing nothing, waiting for nothing and no one.
as though beginning
went on and on
as though it were everything
until it had begun
......
each time it is
as though you were the same
or almost
oh unrepeatable one
needing nothing yourself
and not waiting
To Monday
Once you arrive it is plain
that you do not remember
the last time
you are always
like that
insisting upon
beginning
upon it all beginning
over again
as though nothing had really happened
as though beginning
went on and on
as though it were everything
until it had begun
you never know who you are
the hands of the clock find you
and keep going
without recognition
though what your light
reveals when it rises
wakes from another time
which you appear to have forgotten
traveling all that way
blank and nowhere
before you came to be
with the demands
that you bring with you
from the beginning
each time it is
as though you were the same
or almost
oh unrepeatable one
needing nothing yourself
and not waiting
— W.S. Merwin