My Favorite Thanksgiving Poem

This isn't mine; it's W.S. Merwin's. I first discovered it about six years ago, when the fall of the Twin Towers was still as stunning a loss to our sheltered and complacent lives as the slaughter of the people of Mumbai must be today to the people of India -- or is no other population so sheltered from loss and risk as we Americans even now, even now that we know all so well that no nation is an island.

In any case, I share with you this poem. I find every word and every pulse of it true, and if I were reading it aloud to you my tempo would start slow and sonorous then quicken like steps down a forest path as the light fades (go faster, faster) until finally it all winds down and is done.

I don't know its title. I do know its meaning.

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of 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
with the crooks in office with the rich and the fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings 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 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 as it is