One of the Lives Symbolism, Imagery & Wordplay

It's not so much in the words that Merwin's having fun here, but in the syntax, or order, of his lines and phrases. Syntax isn't usually something we give a lot of conscious thought to. Those of us...

Merwin glosses over images in the first three quarters of the poem. He doesn't really flesh out anything with description. Nope, he just briefly reports something then moves immediately along. We t...