I do not understand the world, father

by chuckofish

It is the last day of September. Where did it go? It is a mystery.

Anyway, today we remember the poet W.S. Merwin (1927-2019), who went to Princeton with Frederick Buechner, back in the day when that’s where Presbyterians went to college. He received many awards during his long career including the Pulitzer and the National Book Award and the Tanning Prize and was popular during the Vietnam era. When he died he lived on an off-the-grid 18-acre restored pineapple plantation in Haiku, Maui, which had been transformed from an “agricultural wasteland” to a “Noah’s Ark” for rare palm trees. He got his own Library of America collection, but I’m really not that familiar with him.

Here’s a poem:

And I found this interesting: “We boomers are in a crisis of confusion We do not know what to do. Retire? To do what? Work on? To what end?” What he says is mostly too true. But I am not confused. “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever.” That goes for boomers in retirement too.