‘It sounds unconvincing to say When I was young

Though I have long wondered what it would be like

To be me now

No older at all it seems from here

As far from myself as ever’

I can remember reading this, the beginning of W. S. Merwin’s “In The Winter Of My Thirty-Eighth Year”, for the first time when I was eighteen, and wondering what it would be like to be that age. And now it is the winter of my thirty-eighth year. While there are many goals of mine that seem distant, and there is sometimes a distance I feel from myself, I do feel, for the most part, closer to myself than ever.