Uploaded February 2013 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Ancient Cypress Press have just published an anthology of Tom Merrill's poetry called Time in Eternity,
ancientcypresspress.com/bookstore.html
An informal sonnet, a spontaneous outpouring, "a moment's monument" - you could say it doesn't obey rules of grammar and syntax, but when in the moment there isn't time for such niceties. It conveys a young man's lovelorn longings and it has a lyrical beauty.
Anything, be it good or ill, that we cannot banish from our thoughts, any persistent influence that come flooding back was soon as we wake every morning, feels as though it is going to last for all eternity.
Here's Screwtape, an old demon, writing to his nephew, Wormwood.
"The humans live in time but our Enemy (God) destines them to eternity. He therefore, I believe, wants them to attend chiefly to two things, to eternity itself, and to that point of time which they call the Present. For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity. "
C S Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Screwtape_Letters
There are more poems and an interview with Tom Merrill here:
thehypertexts.com/T._Merrill_Poet_Poetry_Picture_Bio_Art_Photography.htm
thehypertexts.com/Tom%20Merrill%20Interview%20with%20Michael%20R.%20Burch.htm
When you were as an angel in my arms,
Had laid your bare head just below my chin,
Your length pressed up to mine, entrusting charms
My whole youth's starward longing could not win;
With still the murmur of your love in me,
Miracle-tones of all my lifelong hope,
I wished that there might start eternity
And seal forever that sweet envelope;
And as it did, my thoughts are now for you
As every star is blotted by the sun,
And so the sun itself
Has perished too,
And with it, every dream of mine
But one.
Ancient Cypress Press have just published an anthology of Tom Merrill's poetry called Time in Eternity,
ancientcypresspress.com/bookstore.html
An informal sonnet, a spontaneous outpouring, "a moment's monument" - you could say it doesn't obey rules of grammar and syntax, but when in the moment there isn't time for such niceties. It conveys a young man's lovelorn longings and it has a lyrical beauty.
Anything, be it good or ill, that we cannot banish from our thoughts, any persistent influence that come flooding back was soon as we wake every morning, feels as though it is going to last for all eternity.
Here's Screwtape, an old demon, writing to his nephew, Wormwood.
"The humans live in time but our Enemy (God) destines them to eternity. He therefore, I believe, wants them to attend chiefly to two things, to eternity itself, and to that point of time which they call the Present. For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity. "
C S Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Screwtape_Letters
There are more poems and an interview with Tom Merrill here:
thehypertexts.com/T._Merrill_Poet_Poetry_Picture_Bio_Art_Photography.htm
thehypertexts.com/Tom%20Merrill%20Interview%20with%20Michael%20R.%20Burch.htm
When you were as an angel in my arms,
Had laid your bare head just below my chin,
Your length pressed up to mine, entrusting charms
My whole youth's starward longing could not win;
With still the murmur of your love in me,
Miracle-tones of all my lifelong hope,
I wished that there might start eternity
And seal forever that sweet envelope;
And as it did, my thoughts are now for you
As every star is blotted by the sun,
And so the sun itself
Has perished too,
And with it, every dream of mine
But one.
