The Lake

John Merwin loved fishing, but flyfishing was a sacrament, and he took the magazine’s piscatorially oriented editors streamside to show them how it should be done. There, Merwin hovered like a malignant heron, watching the water, doing God knows what computations, and finally he would cast, and there would be a fish where his fly landed.

No one who watched Merwin did not come away awed, and no one was able to