Poem Analysis: To Myself By W. S. Merwin

“To Myself” by W.S. Merwin, is a poem about rememberance and loss. A man is looking back on his life, realizing he has lost who he was and envisioning his old self reminds him of a loss he wish he could regain. With the use of the title, ‘‘To Myself” he writes to the one person he lost, himself. He feels the person he once was and there is a tinge of regret in his voice, “here a moment before and the air is still alive around where you were.” He keeps remembering what he used to be, still feeling his old self while pretending to be someone else. It made me think of how as we grow older, we take advantage of the present and we tend to lose our childhood and pure adolescent thoughts. We do not stop to play ”pretend” anymore, we outgrow and wish to be something we’re not. When the time comes where you’ve finally reached that year older, ou begin to regret your

We see him struggle to notice his involuntary change and he resents his present self for he is not what he truly wishes to be, "who pretend to be time but you are not time and who speak in the words but you are not what they say." He is searching for who he was and as much as he wants to return to the past he comes to term that it can’t be as simple as that. The speaker struggles with his identity being pulled in two directions, who he wants to be and who he has become, his thoughts not allowing him to cope with the loss of himself. He feels that it is, “here a moment before and the air is still alive around where you were,” he allows his old self to manifest in his mind and that's why he believes he can feel it, because our old selves always stay with us even as a distant