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?
