Extracurricular Activities at Sem - Wyoming Seminary

The poem “After School” was written with
his experiences at Wyoming Seminary in
mind. It appeared in The New Yorker on
September 2, 1985.
for a long time I wanted
to get out of that school
where I had been sent
for the best
I thought of climbing
down the vine
outside the window
at night
after the watchman
had turned the corner
to the boiler room
in the sweet autumn dark
I wanted to slip
through the still dining hall
and down the cellar stairs
in the girls’ wing
Sem alumnus named
U.S. Poet Laureate
William S. Merwin ’44, recipient of Sem’s Joseph C. Donchess
Distinguished Service Award in 2002, was named Poet Laureate on
Wednesday, June 30.
After two years as a boarder at Wyoming Seminary, Merwin
graduated from Princeton University and spent the next several
years traveling, tutoring and writing. He has lived in France,
Mexico, Boston and New York, but settled in Maui, Hawaii in 1975.
With nearly fifty books of poetry, prose and translation to his credit,
Merwin’s work is considered to be among the most widely read and
imitated in America. In a 1997 article, the Atlantic Monthly noted
that his poems have appeared in their pages more frequently than
those of any other poet.
He has won many prizes and awards, such as two Pulitzers (1971
and 2009), the National Book Award (2005), the Tanning Prize, the
Bollingen Prize, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the PEN Translation
Prize, the Wallace Stevens Award and others, and many prestigious
grants and fellowships.
Although most widely known for poetry, Merwin also wrote 21
books of translation, several plays and five books of prose.
For much more information about Merwin including a link to a
video of Merwin reading his poem “Yesterday” at the Geraldine
R. Dodge Foundation Poetry Festival, go to Sem’s Web site, www.
wyomingseminary.org.
6
where I had set the waltzing
in the first book
of “War and Peace”
I would pass unseen in that crowd
into the cellar
and the secret door to the steam
pipes
and under the street
to the swimming pool
I would have persuaded
a girl I liked
to meet me there
and we would swim whispering
because of the echoes
while the light from the street
shone through the frosted
windows
like the light of the moon
all down the long hot room
where the sound of the water
made the heart beat loud
to think of it
but I never
got away then
and when I think now
of following that tunnel
there is a black wolf
tied there waiting
a thin bitch
who snaps at my right hand
but I untie her
and we find our way
out of there as one
and down the street
hungry
nobody in sight at that hour
everything closed
behind us.