Carol Rumens's poem of the weekBooksPoem of the week: After the Dragonflies by WS Merwin
A luminous depiction of these beautiful creatures conceals a stark warning of environmental catastrophe
After the Dragonflies
Dragonflies were as common as sunlight
hovering in their own days
backward forward and sideways
as though they were memory
now there are grown-ups hurrying
who never saw one
and do not know what they
are not seeing
the veins in a dragonfly’s wings
were made of light
the veins in the leaves knew them
and the flowing rivers
the dragonflies came out of the color of water
knowing their own way
when we appeared in their eyes
we were strangers
they took their light with them when they went
there will be no one to remember us
After the Dragonflies is a poem of both wonderment and warning. Above all, it’s a poem. It doesn’t wave polemical arms. It wouldn’t engage with us if we couldn’t feel that the writer had watched the ways of dragonflies, and learned to capture them quickly and exactly, despite the lightness of his word-net. The painful tremor of mutability in the poem includes humankind and its individuals, and the writer himself. The message of concern is coiled in a characteristic structure in which lines seem to shift and shimmer in a moiré of self-punctuation, their diction elegant but plain, their rhythms delicately various.
After the Dragonflies: the preposition locates us readers in the future, and the first line, “Dragonflies were as common as sunlight,” makes us look over our shoulders. We remain in a past-tense narrative: the question is – how far are we looking back? There are plenty of people today who have never seen dragonflies, after all, but that doesn’t mean there are no more dragonflies to see. Only at the end of the poem do we fully, emotionally, understand that the creatures are not simply being imagined as less common: they are extinct. And a shock runs through us at the realisation, a double-shock, as it turns out.
At first, movement is emphasised, and Merwin conjures the extraordinary aerodynamic poise and versatility of dragonfly flight in lines two to four. Readers who have finished the collection, or have followed the progress of the poems to this point, will know by now the significance given to light. Here, in line two, “hovering in their own days”, the dragonflies are not simply placed in the past, as if the singular form of “day” had been used in the expression “in their (own) day”, but given a sort of ownership of the diurnal. They belong to the day, and inhabit it as only they know how to.
They move “as though they were memory” and, because of the enjambment, “now” in line five suggests the sense of “already” governing the next statement, “ … there are grown ups hurrying / who never saw one / and do not know what they are not seeing”. It’s a lightly turned allusion to a complex ignorance. The most hopeless loss is the absence of even the sense of loss. And the rhythm, although it doesn’t change violently or even very noticeably, gives us the comparative movement of the dragonfly and the people: the insect is caught in three kinds of mid-hover (“backward forward and sideways”) while the people flow away in the three swift syllables of “hurrying”.
Through the image of the veins in their wings, the dragonflies are connected to other elements – leaves and water and, above all, light. While the analogy between the poet’s “garden” in this collection and the Garden of Eden is barely hinted at, references to trees and rivers continue to signal the relationship. This poem’s Darwinian view has a prelapsarian quality. Humans are the latecomers on the evolutionary scene: “when we appeared in their eyes / we were strangers”.
A prediction of dire punishment (really, self-punishment) haunts the conclusion. Earlier, I mentioned a “double-shock”. It’s this: we’re made to see that the continued existence of light itself depends on sightedness, and by not seeing the creatures around us we banish the light that makes us ourselves. We banish the human species: “they took their light with them when they went / there will be no one to remember us”. Perhaps there’s an echo here of Martin Niemöller’s famous flight of oratory, beginning “When the Nazis came for the Communists” and ending: “When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.”
The marvel of After the Dragonflies, written by a poet who was losing his eyesight at the time, is that it sharpens the sight of the reader. As he observes at the end of Living With the News, giving us a more optimistic parable of recovered understanding, “our only hope is to be the daylight” .
For readers not already informed about the range of WS Merwin’s activities, the poet is also the founder of a major, long-term conservation project at his home on the island of Maui. Embracing a species-rich Palm Forest and residential spaces for botanists and poets, the Merwin Conservancy is a wonderful extra legacy to accompany a life’s work of superlative poetry. The site contains poems, pictures and information, and is more than worth an online visit.
Finally, to return to the dragonfly theme, some species are already diminishing through habitat loss, use of insecticides and so on. You can find out more about one of them, the beautiful Hine’s emerald dragonfly, here.
- From Garden Time by WS Merwin, published in the UK by Bloodaxe Books and in the USA by Copper Canyon Press.
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