Kunitz, Celebrating Life, Death & the Nondual - Bhakti-Jnani-Mystic-Poet

[Guest guest]

Stanley Kunitz - 100 'Near-year' Nondualist and Mystic Laureate

Nobleman, lineage the likes of Layman Pang and Lal Ded, Ishwara in

Kool-Kunitz-mode: Poets Lost in Performance Art - Their Life...As It

Is: As-If...

The term "Bhakti-Jnani" refers to one who manifests both Love & Wisdom

equally. The Dual & the Nondual in agreement...

An Interview with Elizabeth Farnsworth ~

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, a lifetime in poetry. Elizabeth Farnsworth reports. ( Applause )

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Stanley Kunitz took up his duties as poet

laureate October 12 with a reading of his poems at the Library of

Congress.

STANLEY KUNITZ: "Lamplighter." 1914. "What I remember most was not the

incident at Sarajevo but the first flying steam kettle puffing round

the bend."

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Kunitz was nine years old when World War I broke

out. He was already working, lighting gas lamps on the roads around

Worcester, Massachusetts.

STANLEY KUNITZ: "I stood on the rim of the buggy wheel and raised my

enchanted wand with its tip of orange flame."

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: That flame seemed a metaphor for the light

Kunitz has cast ever since in poems which span the century. On this

evening he read deeply personal works, including one about his

father's suicide.

STANELY KUNITZ: "My mother never forgave my father for killing

himself, especially at such an awkward time, and in a public park,

that spring, when I was waiting to be born."

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And he read works about World War II, the

landing of the men on the Moon, and Haley's Comet, which Kunitz has

seen twice. He is the author of 12 volumes of poetry, including "The

Collected Poems of Stanley Kunitz," which came out this fall. He has

received the Pulitzer and Bollingen poetry prizes, a national medal

of arts, and a national book award. He taught at Columbia and other

universities, and was poetry consultant to the library of congress

before, in the mid- 1970s. He has been a farmer, and still, at age

95, cultivates a large garden at his summer home in Provincetown, on

Cape Cod. He lives about half the year in New York City. I spoke to

Stanley Kunitz at the library of congress.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Congratulations on your new job. You've had this

job before. Why did you take it at this stage of your life?

STANELY KUNITZ, Poet Laureate: In the first place, I was terribly

surprised that I was asked. And then I felt it really is a great

honor, and then I was told that regardless of my age, I was qualified

for the job, and I was happy to hear that. And then I was told that I

would not have to spend a great deal of time traveling or performing,

and I felt good about that. And then I felt that it was something that

I could do... have an impact in the reception of poetry.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: You said, actually, once, that you felt you were

predestined to become a poet. What do you mean by that?

STANELY KUNITZ: My family, fortunately, had an extensive library, and

that was a rare phenomenon in those days. One of the prized volumes

in that library was an unabridged dictionary. And I used to sit in

that green Morris chair and open the heavy dictionary on my lap, and

find a new word every day. It was a big word, a word like"

eleemosynary" or "phantasmagoria" -- some word that, on the tongue,

sounded great to me, and I would go out into the fields and I would

shout those words, because it was so important that they sounded so

great to me. And then eventually I began incorporating them into

verses, into poems. But certainly my thought in the... in the

beginning was that there was so much joy playing with language that I

couldn't consider living without it.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Would you read a poem for us, please?

STANELY KUNITZ: Mm-hmm.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And tell us little about it before you read.

STANELY KUNITZ: This is a poem I wrote in the '70s, after I had lost

several members of my family-- my mother, my two older sisters--

after I had lost, as well, several of my dearest friends in the arts.

And it was a time when I felt I was ready for a change. I was ready to

gather my strengths again and move in a new direction. And this poem

came out of that, and I feel is central to my own work and my own

life. It's called "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."

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: "Live in the layers, not in the litter."

STANELY KUNITZ: I must tell you how I got those lines. They came to me

in a dream. In the middle of the night, I'd had this dream of a voice

out of a cloud, and this is what the voice spoke to me.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Does that happen very often?

STANELY KUNITZ: Dreams have given me many of my poems, yes.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What else gives you a poem? You've said that a

poem is present even before it's written down.

STANELY KUNITZ: Yes. I think a poem lies submerged in the depths of

one's being. It's an amalgamation of images, often the key images out

of a life. I think there are certain episodes in the life that really

form a constellation, and that's the germinal point of the poems. The

poems, when they come with an incident from the immediate present,

latch on to those images that are deep in one's whole sensibility,

and when that happens, everything starts firing at once.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And how have you kept in touch with that? How

have you stayed so intellectually and physically vital all these

years? You've been... you have a poem in this book that goes back to

1914.

STANELY KUNITZ: That's right, mm-hmm.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: How have you done that?

STANELY KUNITZ: Because I haven't dared to forget. I think it's

important for one's survival to keep the richness of the life always

there to be tapped. One doesn't live in the moment, one lives in the

whole history of your being, from the moment you became conscious.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: The last poem in Kunitz's collected works is

"Touch Me," a love poem for his wife. He read its closing lines about

crickets trilling underfoot during a late summer storm in his garden.

STANELY KUNITZ: "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."

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Stanley Kunitz, thank you very much for being with us.

STANELY KUNITZ: And thank you.

To listen to and watch a streaming video of Stanley Kunitz with

Elizabeth Farnsworth, go to this url:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/july-dec00/kunitz.html

~ http://www.pbs.org

THE QUARREL

The word I spoke in anger weighs less than a parsley seed, but a road

runs through it that leads to my grave,that bought-and-paid-for lot

on a salt-sprayed hill in Trurowhere the scrub pines overlook the

bay.Half-way I'm dead enough,strayed from my own nature and my fierce

hold on life.If I could cry, I'd cry, but I'm too old to be anybody's

child.Liebchen,with whom should I quarrel except in the hiss of love,

that harsh, irregular flame?

~Stan the Man

Hornworm: Autumn Lamentation

Since that first morning when I crawledinto the world, a naked grubby

thing,and found the world unkind,my dearest faith has been that

thisis but a trial: I shall be changed.In my imaginings I have

already spentmy brooding winter underground,unfolded silky powdered

wings, and climbedinto the air, free as a puff of cloudto sail over

the steaming fields,alighting anywhere I pleased,thrusting into deep

tubular flowers.It is not so: there may be nectarin those cups, but

not for me.All day, all night, I carry on my backembedded in my

flesh, two rowsof little white cocoons,so neatly stackedthey look

like eggs in a crate.And I am eaten half away.If I can gather

strength enoughI'll try to burrow under a stoneand spin myself a

pursein which to sleep away the cold;though when the sun kisses the

earthagain, I know I won't be there.Instead, out of my chrysaliswill

break, like robbers from a tomb,a swarm of parasitic flies,leaving my

wasted husk behind.Sir, you with the red snippersin your hand,

hovering over me,casting your shadow, I greet you,whether you come as

an angel of deathor of mercy. But tell me,before you choose to slice

me in two:Who can understand the ways of the Great Worm in the Sky?

~Stanley Kunitz, "Hornworm: Autumn Lamentation" from Passing Through:

The Later Poems New and Selected. Originally in The New Yorker.

1995 by Stanley Kunitz.

Click Here to Watch Video

Click thesel inks to listen to Mr. Kunitz and several equally marvelius poet-friends -

STANLEY KUNITZ: King of the River (1970)The Quarrel (1979)

JOHN UPDIKE: Rainbow (2000)

ROBERT BLY: Jerez at Easter (2000)The Norwegian Grandson (2003)

MARK DOTY: Long Point Light (1994)A Display of Mackerel (1995)The

Embrace (1997)Lily and Bronze (2001)

JANE HIRSHFIELD: The Song (1986)Within This Tree (1991)The Love of

Aged Horses (1994)Lying (1994)Three Foxes by the Edge of the Field at

Twilight (1996)The Poet (1997)Apple (1999)

MARY KARR:Beauty and the Shoe Sluts (1998)

I have a book by Mary Karr called "The Liar's Club," detailing her

childhood and life experiences. It's real and raw and vividly fresh.

Anyway, digression halting...

"Kunitz has been writing verse for a long time. His first poem

appeared in 1930, the same year that T.S. Eliot published "Ash

Wednesday.I've forgotten many of those early poems," Kunitz

admitted. But he remembers others quite vividly.

He believes that an artist must reckon with the age in which he lives.

" 'The Layers,' " he said, "speaks to that."

>From that poem:

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.

"I have known many of the great poets in the English language," he

said. "At least I encountered a good portion of the best poets of the

20th century.

"And I follow what is being written today in the contemporary

journals," he added. In fact, Kunitz is a founder of the Fine Arts

Work Center in Provincetown, which offers residency programs to young

poets and artists.

"Everything affects poetry," he said, "including rap. I don't doubt

that the poetry of the future, as even today, is influenced by the

rap culture--just as in the 19th century poets who really initiated

the romantic movement were influenced by the street ballads."

Kunitz, who taught writing at Columbia University for years, has

received just about every accolade available to a contemporary poet.

He's won the Pulitzer Prize, the Bollingen Prize, the National Book

Award and countless other trophies. He's been a senior fellow at the

National Endowment for the Arts, the state poet of New York and a

chancellor emeritus of the Academy of American Poets. He's even been

the Library of Congress's poetry adviser before. From 1974 to 1976 he

served as the consultant in poetry at the library. That position

evolved into poet laureate.

Those years here were tumultuous, he recalled yesterday. He wrote a

poem about being at the library during Watergate. In "The Lincoln

Relics," he speaks to the 16th president:

Mr. President

In this Imperial City,

awash in gossip and power,

where marble eats marble

and your office has been defiled,

I saw the piranhas darting

between the rose-veined columns,

avid to strip the flesh

from the Republic's bones.

Has no one told you

how the slow blood leaks

from your secret wound?

He has written 10 books of verse. He plans to write more. His

collected poems will be published this fall. The one-year appointment

requires very little of the title holder. Kunitz will make $35,000 a

year, maintain an office at the library and preside over special

occasions--a reading in the fall and a lecture in the spring. He will

also be able to hold forth on matters poetic.

"Given my years," he admitted, "I will not be as active a poet laureate as Robert Pinsky has been."

Kunitz doesn't plan to live in Washington.

Other professors and poets cheered the tidings.

"He's a wonderful poet," offered David Gewanter, who teaches poetry at

Georgetown University. "He can write wonderful short poems of nature

that remind you of Robert Frost. And smart and wry poems about

marriage, about life, about the ongoing negotiations of adults."

"That's astonishingly wonderful news," said Pulitzer Prize winner

Henry Taylor, who teaches poetry at American University.

"What sets Kunitz apart from most people," he continued, "is his level

of emotional intensity that historically has been difficult to

maintain as one ages."

Taylor spoke of one of Kunitz's best known poems, "Touch Me."

An excerpt:

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.

"It's a cry from the heart," Taylor said, "about what it's like to be

remarkably aged and be in love with the same woman one was in love

with many years ago."

Kunitz has been married to poet and painter Elise Asher since 1958.

Each has a daughter by another spouse.

"What the poet laureate can do," Taylor concluded, "is remind us, help

us recognize, that poetry is part of our lives even when we don't

think it is. Poetry is inescapable."

~© 2000 The Washington Post Company

"Mr. Kunitz stopped by our New York City bureau this week for a talk

with Robert Siegel and to give us a sampling of some of the poems he

will be reading this weekend." Listen to Robert Siegel's interview

with Stanley Kunitz on All Things Considered. Throughout the month of

April, All Things Considered will be featuring new poets and their

work. See more NPR coverage of National Poetry Month. Visit the

People's Poetry Gathering Web site.

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

"When Jay Parini, a poet, novelist and critic, was told about Mr.

Kuntiz's appointment, he said: "Every poet I know with any sense

looks to Stanley Kunitz and says that's the way to think about a

poetic career. In other words, total devotion to the craft itself,

not the slightest degree of affectation, a complete humility in his

work. There's never a moment when you say, 'He's faking it,' or 'He's

doing this to impress me.' "

~Wiser, Kunitz Returning as Laureate, By DINITIA SMITH

"One of my primary thoughts through the years has been that I am

living and dying at once," he said. "It began long before I was an

aging man. It's continuing. Perhaps the mix gets a bit different." He

cites his poem, "The Layers," as an example: In a rising wind the

manic dust of my friends, those who fell along the way, bitterly

stings my face."

~ S.K.

"I'm a night worker," he said. "I love the sense of solitude and the

silence. "I love to think that here I am alive and burning and the

rest of the world is asleep." Mr. Kunitz, who is slender and

fit-looking, said he had no special prescription for good health or

longevity. "I don't pay much attention to exercise or diet," he said,

though "I'm famous for my martinis.I think what keeps me going is

my caring about being alive and caring about the world. And the fact

that I love being here, that's all."

In A Dark Time ...: Stanley Kunitz Archives

...."break from thinking. As an alternative, here’s stanley kunitz’s introduction to:

Passing Through. It provides an interesting

http://www.lorenwebster.net/In_a_Dark_Time/archives/cat_stanley_kunitz.html

 

"The poem comes in the form of a blessing," he once remarked, "

like the rapture breaking through on the mind."

"Poetry emerges out of the mystery and secrecy of being,'' he has

said. ''It is the occult and passionate grammar of a life.''

from Passing Through: The Later Poems, New and Selected by Stanley Kunitz(W. W. Norton, 1995)

The Round by Stanley Kunitz

Hear introductory remarks by Stanley Kunitz (in RealAudio format).

Hear Stanley Kunitz read "The Round" (in RealAudio format). (For

help, see a note about the audio.) Also by Stanley Kunitz:King of the

River; The Quarrel; Touch Me. Go to "A Visionary Poet at Ninety" in

the June, 1996, issue of The Atlantic Monthly. Go to:An Audible

AnthologyPoetry Pages

Light splashed this morningon the shell-pink anemonesswaying on their

tall stems;down blue-spiked veronicalight flowed in rivuletsover the

humps of the honeybees;this morning I saw light kissthe silk of the

rosesin their second flowering,my late bloomersflushed with their

brandy.A curious gladness shook me.

So I have shut the doors of my house,so I have trudged downstairs to

my cell,so I am sitting in semi-darkhunched over my deskwith nothing

for a viewto tempt me but a bloated compost heap,steamy old

stinkpile,under my window;and I pick my notebook upand I start to

read aloudthe still-wet words I scribbledon the blotted page:"Light

splashed . . ."

I can scarcely wait till tomorrowwhen a new life begins for me,as it

does each day,as it does each day.

1995 by Stanley Kunitz. All rights reserved. Used by

permission. from Passing Through: The Later Poems, New and

Selected(W. W. Norton, 1995)

Anemone

Anemone comes from the Greek word for wind. It was believed that the

wind caused anemone blossoms to open. Anemones were said to grow in

abundance on Mount Olympus to please the gods.

His poem "The Long Boat," expresses it all, he said. In the poem, he

imagines lying down in a cradle with the family ghosts, "buffeted by

the storm, endlessly drifting." And at the end, it is " As if it

didn't matter/ which way was home;/ as if he didn't know/ he loved

the earth so much/ he wanted to stay forever."

The poem comes in the form of a blessing—

‘like rapture breaking on the mind,’ as I tried to phrase it in my youth.

Through the years I have found this gift of poetry to be life-sustaining, life-enhancing,

and absolutely unpredictable.

Does one live, therefore, for the sake of poetry?

No, the reverse is true: poetry is for the sake of the life.”

—Stanley Kunitz

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

lifeis slowing down,and the small clocks run wild.For this you were

born.You have cried to the windand heard the wind’s reply:“I did not

choose the way,the way chose me.”You have tasted fire on your

tonguetill it is swollen blackwith prophetic joy:“Burn with me!The

only music is time,the only dance is love.”

ORGANIC BLOOMThe brain constructs its systems to encloseThe steady

paradox of thought and sense;Momentously its tissued meaning growsTo

solve and integrate experience.But life escapes closed reason. We

explainOur chaos into cosmos, cell by cell,Only to learn of some

insidious painBeyond the limits of our charted hell,A guilt nor

mentioned in our prayers, a sinConceived against the self. So, vast

and vasterThe plasmic circles of gray disciplineSpread outward to

include each new disaster.Enormous floats the brain's organic

bloomTill, bursting like a fruit, it scatters doom.Miss Murphy in

first grade

wrote its name in chalk

across the board and told us

it was roaring down the stormtracks

of the Milky Way at frightful speed

and if it wandered off its course

and smashed into the earth

there'd be no school tomorrow.

A red-bearded preacher from the hills

with a wild look in his eyes

stood in the public square

at the playground's edge

proclaiming he was sent by God

to save every one of us,

even the little children.

"Repent, ye sinners!" he shouted,

waving his hand-lettered sign.

At supper I felt sad to think

that it was probably

the last meal I'd share

with my mother and my sisters;

but I felt excited too

and scarcely touched my plate.

So mother scolded me

and sent me early to my room.

The whole family's asleep

except for me. They never heard me steal

into the stairwell hall and climb

the ladder to the fresh night air.

Look for me, Father, on the roof

of the red brick building

at the foot of Green Street --

that's where we live, you know, on the top floor.

I'm the boy in the white flannel gown

sprawled on this coarse gravel bed

searching the starry sky,

waiting for the world to end. ~Halley's Comet

How should I tell him my fable and the fears,How bridge the chasm in a

casual tone,Saying, "The house, the stucco one you built,We lost.

Sister married and went from home,And nothing comes back, it's

strange, from where she goes."

~(from 'Father and Son')

You have your language too, an eerie medley of clicks and hoots and

trills, location-notes and love calls.

`(from 'The Wellfleet Whale')

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,tumblingover the

rockstill you paint themwith 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-deceptionsand the iridescent image swimsthrough a mirror

that flows,you would surprise yourselfin that other fleshheavy with

milt,bruised, battering toward the damthat lips the orgiastic pool.

Come. Bathe in these waters.Increase and die.

If the power were granted youto break out of your cells,but the

imagination failsand the doors of the senses closeon the child

within,you would dare to be changed,as you are changing now,into the

shape you dreadbeyond 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 lifeis slowing down,and

the small clocks run wild.For this you were born.You have cried to

the windand heard the wind's reply:"I did not choose the way,the way

chose me."You have tasted the fire on your tonguetill it is swollen

blackwith 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 admitthat

nothing compels youany more, nothingat all abides,but nostalgia and

desire,the two-way ladderbetween heaven and hell.On the thresholdof

the last mystery,at the brute absolute hour,you have looked into the

eyesof your creature self,which are glazed with madness,and you sayhe

is not broken but endures,limber and firmin the state of his

shining,forever inheriting his salt kingdom,from which he is

banishedforever.

~ in Passing Through: The Later Poems, New and Selected (W. W. Norton,

1995)Originally published in The Atlantic Monthly, July 1970

Father and Son

Now in the suburbs and the falling lightI followed him, and now down

sandy roadWhiter than bone-dust, through the sweetCurdle of fields,

where the plumsDropped with their load of ripeness, one by one.Mile

after mile I followed, with skimming feet,After the secret master of

my blood,Him, steeped in the odor of ponds, whose indomitable

loveKept me in chains. Strode years; stretched into bird;Raced

through the sleeping country where I was young,The silence unrolling

before me as I came,The night nailed like an orange to my brow.How

should I tell him my fable and the fears,How bridge the chasm in a

casual tone,Saying, "The house, the stucco one you built,We lost.

Sister married and went from home,And nothing comes back, it's

strange, from where she goes.I lived on a hill that had too many

rooms;Light we could make, but not enough of warmth,And when the

light failed, I climbed under the hill.The papers are delivered every

day;I am alone and never shed a tear."At the water's edge, where the

smothering ferns liftedTheir arms, "Father!" I cried, "Return! You

knowThe way. I’ll wipe the mudstains from your clothes;No trace, I

promise, will remain. InstructYou son, whirling between two wars,In

the Gemara of your gentleness,For I would be a child to those who

mournAnd brother to the foundlings of the fieldAnd friend of

innocence and all bright eyes.0 teach me how to work and keep me

kind."Among the turtles and the lilies he turned to meThe white

ignorant hollow of his face

~Stanley Kunitz

"I keep trying to improve my control over language,

so that I won't have to tell lies."

~ (Kunitz in Contemporary Poets, 1975)

THE SNAKES OF SEPTEMBERAll summer I heard them rustling in the

shrubbery, outracing me from tier to tier in my garden,a whisper

among the viburnums, a signal flashed from the hedgerow,a shadow

pulsing in the barberry thicket.Now that the nights are chill and the

annuals spent,I should have thought them gone, in a torpor of blood

slipped to the nether world before the sickle frost.Not so. In the

deceptive balmof noon, as if defiant of the curse that spoiled

another garden,these two appear on showthrough a narrow slitin the

dense green brocade of a north-country spruce,dangling head-down,

entwinedin a brazen love-knot.I put out my hand and strokethe fine,

dry grit of their skins. After all,we are partners in this land,

co-signers of a covenant. At my touch the wild braid of creation

trembles.

Summer is late, my heart.Words plucked out of the airsome forty years

agowhen I was wild with loveand torn almost in twoscatter like leaves

this nightof whistling wind and rain.It is my heart that's late,it is

my song that's flown.Outdoors all afternoonunder a gunmetal

skystaking my garden down,I kneeled to the crickets trillingunderfoot

as if aboutto burst from their crusty shells;and like a child

againmarveled to hear so clearand brave a music pourfrom such a small

machine.What makes the engine go?Desire, desire, desire.The longing

for the dancestirs in the buried life.One season only,and it's

done.So let the battered old willowthrash against the windowpanesand

the house timbers creak.Darling, do you rememberthe man you married?

Touch me,remind me who I am.

~Stanley Kunitz, from Passing Through: The Later Poems, New and Selected(W. W. Norton, 1995)

Passing ThroughNobody in the widow's householdever celebrated

anniversaries.In the secrecy of my roomI would not admit I caredthat

my friends were given parties.Before I left town for schoolmy

birthday went up in smoke in a fire at City Hall that guttedthe

Department of Vital Statistics.If it weren't for a census reportof a

five-year-old White Malesharing my mother's addressat the Green

Street tenement in WorcesterI'd have no documentary proofthat I

exist. You are the first, my dear, to bully meinto these festive

occasions.Sometimes, you say, I wearan abstracted look that drives

youup the wall, as though it signifieddistress or disaffection.Don't

take it so to heart.Maybe I enjoy not-being as muchas being who I am.

Maybeit's time for me to practicegrowing old. The way I look at it,

I'm passing through a phase:gradually I'm changing to a word.Whatever

you choose to claimof me is always yours:nothing is truly mineexcept

my name. I onlyborrowed this dust.

The Testing-Tree

1

On my way home from school up

tribal Providence Hill past the Academy

ballpark where I could never hope to play

I scuffed in the drainage ditch

among the sodden seethe of leaves hunting for perfect

stones rolled out of glacial time

into my pitcher's hand; then sprinted

lickety- split on my magic Keds

from a crouching start, scarcely touching the

ground with my flying skin

as I poured it on for the prize of the mastery

over that stretch of road,

with no one no where to deny when I flung myself down

that on the given course

I was the world's fastest human.

2

Around the bend that tried to loop

me home dawdling came natural

across a nettled field riddled with rabbit-life

where the bees sank sugar-wells

in the trunks of the maples and a stringy old

lilac more than two stories tall

blazing with mildew remembered a door in the

long teeth of the woods. All of

it happened slow: brushing the stickseed off,

wading through jewelweed

strangled by angel's hair, spotting the print of

the deer and the red fox's scats.

Once I owned the key to an

umbrageous trail thickened with mosses

where flickering presences gave me right

of passage as I followed in the steps

of straight-backed Massassoit soundlessly

heel-and-toe practicing my Indian walk.

3

Past the abandoned quarry where the

pale sun bobbed in the sump of the

granite, past copperhead ledge,

where the ferns gave foothold, I walked,

deliberate, on to the clearing, with

the stones in my pocket changing to oracles

and my coiled ear tuned to the

slightest leaf-stir. I had kept my

appointment. There I stood in the shadow,

at fifty measured paces, of the

inexhaustible oak, tyrant and target,

Jehovah of acorns, watchtower of the

thunders, that locked King Philip's War

in its annulated core under the cut of

my name. Father wherever you are I

have only three throws bless my good right

arm. In the haze of afternoon, while

the air flowed saffron, I played my game for

keeps -- for love, for poetry, and

for eternal life -- after the trials of

summer.

4

In the recurring dream my mother

stands in her bridal gown

under the burning lilac, with Bernard Shaw and

Bertie Russell kissing her hands;

the house behind her is in ruins; she is

wearing an owl's face and makes barking

noises. Her minatory finger points.

I pass through the cardboard doorway askew

in the field and peer down a well

where an albino walrus huffs. He has the

gentlest eyes. If the dirt keeps sifting in,

staining the water yellow, why should

I be blamed? Never try to explain.

That single Model A sputtering up the grade

unfurled a highway behind where the

tanks maneuver, revolving their turrets.

In a murderous time the heart breaks and

breaks and lives by breaking.

It is necessary to go through dark and deeper dark

and not to turn. I am looking

for the trail. Where is my testing-tree?

Give me back my stones!

~What Is Found There, an archive of contemporary poetry.

"The Testing-Tree" by Stanley Kunitz is from Passing Through:

the Later Poems, New and Selected. © 1995 by Stanley Kunitz.

Originally appeared in The New Yorker.

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