Poetry as teacher

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

Shared by Claire Beynon in her Feb. 12 post.  In her current post, she offers excerpts from Pablo Neruda's BOOK OF QUESTIONS and an introduction to this week's Tuesday Poem, which the editor calls "oceanic."  I would also call it mythic, ancient and exemplifying the truths we find nowhere but poetry.  While at Claire's blog, please take time to see her art.  For reasons I can't put into words other than "light," her current work speaks to me of William Blake.  My first job, begun when I was 14, was at the Huntington Library.  On coffee breaks and lunch hours I visited the exhibits.  Blake was just outside my office door.  Without poetry, without illumination,  how would we describe ourselves?  What could we possibly know?