One of the Lives

　　 by W. S. Merwin

　　 If I had not met the red-haired boy whose father

　　 had broken a leg parachuting into Provence

　　 to join the resistance in the final stage of the war

　　 and so had been killed there as the Germans were moving north

　　 out of Italy and if the friend who was with him

　　 as he was dying had not had an elder brother

　　 who also died young quite differently in peacetime

　　 leaving two children one of them with bad health

　　 who had been kept out of school for a whole year by an illness

　　 and if I had written anything else at the top

　　 of the examination form where it said college

　　 of your choice or if the questions that day had been

　　 put differently and if a young woman in Kittanning

　　 had not taught my father to drive at the age of twenty

　　 so that he got the job with the pastor of the big church

　　 in Pittsburgh where my mother was working and if

　　 my mother had not lost both parents when she was a child

　　 so that she had to go to her grandmother's in Pittsburgh

　　 I would not have found myself on an iron cot

　　 with my head by the fireplace of a stone farmhouse

　　 that had stood empty since some time before I was born

　　 I would not have travelled so far to lie shivering

　　 with fever though I was wrapped in everything in the house

　　 nor have watched the unctuous doctor hold up his needle

　　 at the window in the rain light of October

　　 I would not have seen through the cracked pane the darkening

　　 valley with its river sliding past the amber mountains

　　 nor have wakened hearing plums fall in the small hour