WS Merwin "Going" and "Youth"

WS Merwin is 86 years old, having been born on September 30.  He is exactly 20 years older than I.  We met when I was in my early 30's, though I knew his poetry and now own every book he translated as well as every edition of his poetry collection.  The early books he signed to me.  I gave two lectures on his work, one about the architecture of his poems and in his poems, doors and windows, and spaces...and the other about his search for the "lost camellia" of John Bartram, which was sponsored by NEH, The Swedish Heritage Museum, and the John Bartram Society of Philadelphia.  This lecture looked at WS Merwin as  poet interested in the Naturalists, and anticipating his ecological commitment to his palm garden which species he is interested in conserving.

Going

Only humans believe
there is a word for goodbye
we have one in every language
one of the first words we learn
it is made out of greeting
but they are going away
the raised hand waving
the face the person the place
the animal the day
leaving the word behind
and what it was meant to say

and...

Through all of youth I was looking for you
without knowing what I was looking for

or what to call you I think I did not
even know I was looking how would I

have known you when I saw you as I did
time after time when you appeared to me

as you did naked offering yourself
entirely at that moment and you let

me breathe you touch you taste you knowing
no more than I did and only when I

began to think of losing you did I
recognize you when you were already

past memory part distance remaining
mine in the ways that I learn to miss you

from what we cannot hold the stars are made of