When You Go Away by W.S Merwin

When You Go Away by W. S. Merwin

When you go away the wind clicks around to the north

The painters work all day but at sundown the paint falls

Showing the black walls

The clock goes back to striking the same hour

That has no place in the years

And at night wrapped in the bed of ashes

In one breath I wake

It is the time when the beards of the dead get their growth

I remember that I am falling

That I am the reason

And that my words are the garment of what I shall never be

Like the tucked sleeve of a one-armed boy

Analysis:

            In the poem “When You Go Away”, dark tone and a multitude of literary devices heighten Merwin’s persistent obsession with death. The overall tone of the poem is dark and sinister. From the poems opening lines we, the readers get the sense of eminence, almost as is something significant will occur. However this is short lived, the poem finishes in a still dark and dreary fashion but offers little in the way of climax.