Merwin

 W. S. Merwin was an American poet, translator, and environmental activist, widely regarded as one of the major English-language poets of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

A few key things about him:

• Poet of loss, memory, and nature — His poems often explore time, mortality, grief, silence, memory, and the natural world. He wrote in a spare, clear style that can feel quiet but emotionally intense.
• Two-time Poet Laureate / Pulitzer winner — He won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry twice and served as the U.S. Poet Laureate.
• Translator — He translated works from many languages, helping bring poets from around the world into English.
• Environmental work — Later in life, he lived in Maui, where he and his wife restored damaged land by planting thousands of palm trees and supporting conservation.

His style changed over time. Early poems can be formal and mythic; later poems became quieter and more stripped down—often without punctuation, which gives them a drifting, meditative feel.

If that line caught your attention, these are good places to start:

• The Lice — darker, powerful, politically charged poems.
• The Shadow of Sirius — late poems about memory, age, and loss.
• “Separation” — brief and devastating.
• “For the Anniversary of My Death” — one of his most famous poems about mortality and time.

A lot of people encounter Merwin through a single line that seems to stop them for a moment—like the one you quoted.