“One of America’s greatest living poets.”—The Washington Post Book World

“Merwin keeps his language simple but his perceptions complex. Classical in their lines of inquiry and restraint yet vital in their attunement to the here and now, these personal odes and musings on daily existence and the cycles of life are, by turns, bemused and exalted . . . each poem infuses the collection with buoyancy and light.”—Booklist

Now in paperback, W.S. Merwin’s latest masterwork—which reviewers have described as “meditative,” “playful,” and “lithely beautiful”—guides readers to universal themes through worldly specifics. Akin to Pablo Neruda’s Elemental Odes, every poem in Present Company directly addresses the people and things of daily life, as in “To the Thief at the Airport” or “To Lingering Regrets.”

“To This May”

They know so much more now about

the heart we are told but the world

still seems to come one at a time

one day one year one season and here

it is spring once more with its birds

nesting in the holes in the walls

its morning finding the first time

its light pretending not to move

always beginning as it goes