Christopher Merrill

• The Ground Swell​
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arriving from another continent
to tilt the buoy toward the shirtless sailors
bewildered by the sudden rise of water
and, reclining on the bow, the lovers
who hope that the afternoon will never end,
leaves the outrigger in a trough, leaning
shoreward, on the same axis as the buoy,
with its mast bisecting a line of high thin clouds
laid like paving stones            on the blue altar
of the sky, in a V that points beyond the canvas,
where the wave travels on to meet the shore
and the sunbathers lolling on the sand,
the fisherman mending his nets, the actress
climbing a palm tree to escape the crowd
of autograph seekers and paparazzi
positioning themselves along the beach
and hotel balcony, the tourist boat
departing for a blasted coral reef,
the lifeguards, waiters, and bartenders scanning
the clouds on the horizon for a sign
that their way of life is coming to an end--
guns oiled and ready, the ramparts fortified,
an editor retrieving from the morgue
the words of the wit who vanished in the desert:
War, said the Gringo in Mexico, is God’s way
of teaching Americans geography.
 
after the painting by Edward Hopper (1939)
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Christopher Merrill has published six collections of poetry, including Watch Fire, for which he received the Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets; many edited volumes and translations; and six books of nonfiction, among them, Only the Nails Remain: Scenes from the Balkan Wars, Things of the Hidden God: Journey to the Holy Mountain, The Tree of the Doves: Ceremony, Expedition, War, and Self-Portrait with Dogwood. His writings have been translated into nearly forty languages; his journalism appears widely; his honors include a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres from the French government, numerous translation awards, and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial and Ingram Merrill Foundations. As director of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa since 2000, Merrill has conducted cultural diplomacy missions to more than fifty countries. He served on the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO from 2011-2018, and in April 2012 President Barack Obama appointed him to the National Council on the Humanities.

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