Quote of the Day (W. S. Merwin, on the Shock of the First Flood)

“At last the sigh of recession: the land

Wells from the water; the beasts depart; the man

Whose shocked speech must conjure a landscape

As of some country where the dead years keep

A circle of silence, a drying vista of ruin,

Musters himself, rises . . .”— American poet W. S. Merwin, “Dictum: For a Masque of Deluge,” in A Mask for Janus (1952)

I am not familiar with the work of W.S. Merwin, and Dan Chiasson, in his 90th-birthday retrospective on him in this week’s issue of The New Yorker, is not particularly impressed with the poet’s early collection, A Mask for Janus. No matter: As soon as I read the poem excerpted here, on Noah’s reaction to the world he found after the Great Flood, it seemed all too appropriate to the Southern U.S. in the wake of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, particularly the “circle of silence, a drying vista of ruin.”

(The photo accompanying this post, showing storm surge flooding caused by Hurricane Isabel in Bowleys Quarters, Maryland, in September 2003, was taken by Jason Cohen.)