The Morning Reading: "The dead will think the living are worth it"

1969.

When the War Is Over
- W.S. Merwin


When the war is over

We will be proud of course the air will be

Good for breathing at last

The waters will have been improved the salmon

And the silence of heaven will migrate more perfectly

The dead will think the living are worth it we will know

Who we are

And we will all enlist again


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Check out Matthew Zapruder's essay on Merwin at the LA Review of Books:
 When the War Is Over: On Merwin and the Language of War