Kunitz
As I was walking to the bus this morning (gone to
Amagansett for the day), I stopped by the storefront of my corner bookstore (as
I do every day) to peruse their book display windows. I noticed in the corner a
bit of a poem on a plaque, excerpted as part of a memorial to a woman I believe
worked in the bookstore for years; she must have passed away recently. The poet
from whom they borrowed to remember her is Stanley Kunitz; I read his words, and
was moved by them. So once back around the internet, I googled. Am excerpting
some favorite bits -- this first one was the bit in the window, starting at the
way I look at it --
Sometimes, you
say, I wear
an abstracted look that drives
you
up the wall, as though it
signified
distress or
disaffection.
Don't take it so to
heart.
Maybe I enjoy not-being as
much
as being who I am.
Maybe
it's time for me to
practice
growing old. The way I look
at it, I'm passing through a
phase:
gradually I'm changing to a
word.
Whatever you choose to
claim
of me is always
yours:
nothing is truly
mine
except my name. I
only
borrowed this
dust.
- from
Passing
Through.
Hm.
Two others of his are excerpted below;
read more. I like them quite a bit.
In
other thoughts... am loving the silence and the light out here. Don't want to go
back to town just yet. Time, I think, for a walk on the beach.
King of the
River
If the water were clear
enough,
if the water were
still,
but the water is not
clear,
the water is not
still,
you would see
yourself,
slipped out of your
skin,
nosing
upstream,
slapping,
thrashing,
tumbling
over
the rocks
till you paint
them
with your belly's
blood:
Finned
Ego,
yard of muscle that
coils,
uncoils.
If
the knowledge were given you,
but it is not
given,
for the membrane is
clouded
with
self-deceptions
and the iridescent image
swims
through a mirror that
flows,
you would surprise
yourself
in that other
flesh
heavy with
milt,
bruised, battering toward the
dam
that lips the orgiastic
pool.
Come. Bathe in these
waters.
Increase and
die.
If the power were granted
you
to break out of your
cells,
but the imagination
fails
and the doors of the senses
close
on the child
within,
you would dare to be
changed,
as you are changing
now,
into the shape you
dread
beyond the merely
human.
A dry fire eats
you.
Fat drips from your
bones.
The flutes of your gills
discolor.
You have become a ship for
parasites.
The great clock of your
life
is slowing
down,
and the small clocks run
wild.
For this you were
born.
You have cried to the
wind
and heard the wind's
reply:
"I did not choose the
way,
the way chose
me."
You have tasted the fire on your
tongue
till it is swollen
black
with a prophetic
joy:
"Burn with
me!
The only music is
time,
the only dance is
love."
If the heart were pure
enough,
but it is not
pure,
you would
admit
that nothing compels
you
any more,
nothing
at all
abides,
but nostalgia and
desire,
the two-way
ladder
between heaven and
hell.
On the
threshold
of the last
mystery,
at the brute absolute
hour,
you have looked into the
eyes
of your creature
self,
which are glazed with
madness,
and you
say
he is not broken but
endures,
limber and
firm
in the state of his
shining,
forever inheriting his salt
kingdom,
from which he is
banished
forever.
The Science of the
Night
I touch you in the night, whose
gift was you,
My careless
sprawler,
And I touch you cold, unstirring,
star-bemused,
That have become the land of your
self-strangeness.
What long seduction of the
bone has led you
Down the imploring roads I
cannot take
Into the arms of ghosts I never
knew,
Leaving my manhood on a rumpled
field
To guard you where you lie so
deep
In
absent-mindedness,
Caught in the calcium snows
of sleep?
And even should I track you to
your birth
Through all the cities of your
mortal trial,
As in my jealous thought I try to
do,
You would escape me--from the brink of
earth
Take off to where the lawless auroras
run,
You with your wild and metaphysic
heart.
My touch is on you, who are light-years
gone.
We are not souls but systems, and we
move
In clouds of our
unknowing
like great
nebulae.
Our very motives swirl and have their
start
With father lion and with mother
crab.
Dreamer, my own lost
rib,
Whose planetary dust is
blowing
Past archipelagoes of myth and
light
What far Magellans are you mistress
of
To whom you speed the pleasure of your
art?
As through a glass that magnifies my
loss
I see the lines of your spectrum shifting
red,
The universe expanding, thinning
out,
Our worlds flying, oh flying, fast
apart.
From hooded powers and from
abstract flight
I summon you, your person and
your pride.
Fall to me now from outer
space,
Still fastened desperately to my
side;
Through gulfs of streaming
air
Bring me the mornings of the milky
ways
Down to my threshold in your drowsy
eyes;
And by the virtue of your honeyed
word
Restore the liquid language of the
moon,
That in gold mines of secrecy you
delve.
Awake!
My
whirling hands stay at the noon,
Each cell
within my body holds a heart
And all my hearts
in unison strike twelve.
Posted: Wednesday - September 21, 2005 at 04:35 PM
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