Thanks

Any Good Poem

Richard Berlin, MD, shares the poem "Thanks," by WS Merwin. Merwin was a celebrated American poet, translator, and environmentalist known for his prolific career, marked by 2 Pulitzer Prizes and his tenure as the US Poet Laureate. Early in his life, he wrote hymns for his Presbyterian minister father. Merwin attended Princeton, and developed a passion for languages while translating European classics and working for Robert Graves in Spain. After years of international travel, he settled in Hawaii, where he became deeply involved in Zen Buddhism and the restoration of a devastated landscape into a world-renowned palm garden, themes that profoundly influenced his later, more personal poetry.

Dr Berlin has been writing a poem about his experience of being a doctor every month for the past 27 years in Psychiatric Times in a column called “Poetry of the Times.” He is an instructor in psychiatry, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, Massachusetts. His latest book is Tender Fences.