Remembering Merton

By Tracy

Today is the anniversary of Thomas Merton's death (coincidentally too, the anniversary of the day he entered the Trappist order many years earlier).

Merton's writing has been immensely important to both of us at different stages in our lives.

Here's an extract from one of his poems, "The Fall":

They fall, they fall into apartments and are securely established!

They find themselves in streets. They are licensed
To proceed from place to place
They now know their own names
They can name several friends and know
Their own telephones must some time ring.

If all telephones ring at once, if all names are shouted at once and all cars crash at one crossing:
If all cities explode and fly away in dust
Yet identities refuse to be lost. There is a name and a number for everyone.

There is a definite place for bodies, there are pigeon holes for ashes:
Such security can business buy!

Who would dare to go nameless in so secure a universe?
Yet, to tell the truth, only the nameless are at home in it.

They bear with them in the center of nowhere the unborn flower of nothing:
This is the paradise tree. It must remain unseen until words end and arguments are silent.

[From The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton, New Directions, 1977)