Eerily vatic, she was "informed" of his death on the very day it happened, 5,000 miles away, and proclaimed with Napoleonic theatricality: "Inexorable history is seated on his .
The result is her 70th book and her second memoir, which echoes the earnest and vaguely vatic tone of her first, A Bridge in Passing, published in 1954.
Many Western ears will find it hard to tell whether Merwin is being vatic or phatic.