#stanley kunitz

[havingapoemwithyou]

touch me by Stanley Kunitz

[mournfulroses]

Anna Akhmatova, translated by Stanley Kunitz, from Poems of Akhmatova; "Crucifixion,"

[kiisuuumii]

Stanley Kunitz, from "Touch Me," featured in Leaning toward Light

[winged-cries]

[cutiewithawakenedheart]

"The only music is time,

the only dance is love."

----Stanley Kunitz

[leehallfae]

“blue poured into summer blue, / a hawk broke from his cloudless tower, / the roof of the silo blazed, and i knew / that part of my life was over. / already the iron door of the north / clangs open: birds, leaves, snows / order their populations forth, / and a cruel wind blows.”

— stanley kunitz, “end of summer”

[headlightsforever]

You must be careful not to deprive the poem of its wild origin.

Stanley Kunitz

[poem-today]

A poem by Stanley Kunitz

The Layers

I have walked through many lives, some of them my own, and I am not who I was, though some principle of being abides, from which I struggle not to stray. When I look behind, as I am compelled to look before I can gather strength to proceed on my journey, I see the milestones dwindling toward the horizon and the slow fires trailing from the abandoned camp-sites, over which scavenger angels wheel on heavy wings. Oh, I have made myself a tribe out of my true affections, and my tribe is scattered! How shall the heart be reconciled to its feast of losses? In a rising wind the manic dust of my friends, those who fell along the way, bitterly stings my face. Yet I turn, I turn, exulting somewhat, with my will intact to go wherever I need to go, and every stone on the road precious to me. In my darkest night, when the moon was covered and I roamed through wreckage, a nimbus-clouded voice directed me: “Live in the layers, not on the litter.” Though I lack the art to decipher it, no doubt the next chapter in my book of transformations is already written. I am not done with my changes.

Stanley Kunitz (1905-2006)

Stanley Kunitz introduces and reads his poem

[dreamy-conceit]

I have walked through many lives, some of them my own

— Stanley Kunitz, 'The Layers'

[sleepysera]

"I can scarcely wait till tomorrow when a new life begins for me, as it does each day, as it does each day."

-Stanley Kunitz, "The Round" (1985)

[putah-creek]

Poetry is ultimately mythology, the telling of the soul's passage through the valley of this life, its adventure in time, in history. Stanley Kunitz

[mournfulroses]

Stanley Kunitz, from Gods & Mortals: Modern Poems on Classics; "The Approach to Thebes,"

[theregencyreticule]

Touch Me

by Stanley Kunitz

Summer is late, my heart.

Words plucked out of the air

some forty years ago

when I was wild with love

and torn almost in two

scatter like leaves this night

of whistling wind and rain.

It is my heart that's late,

it is my song that's flown.

Outdoors all afternoon

under a gunmetal sky

staking my garden down,

I kneeled to the crickets trilling

underfoot as if about

to burst from their crusty shells;

and like a child again

marveled to hear so clear

and brave a music pour

from such a small machine.

What makes the engine go?

Desire, desire, desire.

The longing for the dance

stirs in the buried life.

One season only,

and it's done.

So let the battered old willow

thrash against the windowpanes

and the house timbers creak.

Darling, do you remember

the man you married? Touch me,

remind me who I am.

from Passing Through: The Later Poems, New and Selected by Stanley Kunitz

(W. W. Norton, 1995)

[theshatterednotes]

Stanley Kunitz

[cutiewithawakenedheart]

"What do I want of my life?

More! More!"

----Stanley Kunitz