With WS Merwin Saying Thank You, Yes, But Laughing, Too

We Are Saying Thank You
by W.S. Merwin

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridge to bow from the railings
we are running out the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feeling we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like the cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

With WS Merwin Saying
Thank You, Yes,
But Laughing, Too

“Laugh at the Devil for he cannot bear to be mocked.“
—Reformation aphorism variously attributed

“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers…” —Epistle of St. Paul to the Ephesians, chapter 6, verse 12

With the pace of the treadmill increasing,
with the carefully controlled gradient, steeply rising,
with the expanding Cloud,
with the separation between served and server growing ever more natural,
we are laughing;

With schoolyard bullying and sneers, the complacent in-group despite, and the inevitable fatal lashback by its victims,
we are laughing;

With the gleaming costumes on parade,
we are laughing;

With the daily prayers for Armageddon and smugly televised gleeful promises of damnation,
we are laughing;

With the rise and fall of tired arguments chanted in rounds echoing in halls according to the demands of political fashion,
we are laughing;

With the pronouncements daily descending forth from the national whited sepulchers,
we are laughing;

With the robot bombs shredding the children leaving bundles of bloody clothing,
we are laughing;

With tortured screams muffled by their displacement beyond the high proud walls of homeland security,
we are laughing;

With knowing glances and raised eyebrows passing for due process,
we are laughing;

With the coffers of the public treasury emptied into the pockets of senior management,
we are laughing;

With the bones of the slaughtered mouldering in secret graves or lying expertly arranged according to considerations of forensic policy,
we are laughing;

With the graduates of the cloistered School of the Americas venturing forth in serried ranks to the good works for which they have been prepared,
we are laughing;

With the careful and exacting genetic surgeries spawning horrible wonders in corporate crèches,
we are laughing;

With the endless miles of tarmac going and coming without change,
with the explosive creep of walled subdivisions burying every promise of spring,
we are laughing

With the seasonal wash of clever and deadly chemistry,
we are laughing;

With the perfect aliquots of unnatural green,
we are laughing;

With the spreading stain of poisoned smoke blighting the trees as their limbs wither to grey sticks against a sour sky,
we are laughing;

Bearing our children and our grandparents into sterile clinics stripped of every anodyne,
we are laughing;

Watching the jets land and take off, land and take off, land and take off, their fat bellies disgorging tons of matériel for the operation,
we are laughing;

Hungry and enduring the freedom of no work, sitting on the docks and watching the ships loading grain for export,
we are laughing;

With the end of meaning replacing cynical exploitation with cynical exploitation,
we are laughing;

Punched to the floor and stomped for our disrespect, we look bloodily up with grins on our faces and we are laughing;

With grins on our faces after crashing into each other and the van rushing the SWAT team to the scene,
we are laughing;

Struck dumb and silly and gazing into the last sliver of the setting sun, hoping to blind ourselves, we are offering up our remaining treasure,
and laughing;

With tears on our faces, and falling down on the sidewalks, in the alleyways, on the shining linoleum of the asylums, against the bars of the prisons,
we are laughing;

We are laughing and laughing and laughing;
We are laughing and waving our arms, waving goodbye.