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Originally uploaded by writer_mama.
Former poet laureate, Stanley Kunitz died on Mother's Day at the age of 100. I cried when I read the news, but how long did I expect him to live? Forever? Yes.
Here is one of my favorite of his poem, published when he was 90. Please take a two minutes and read it!:
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.
6 comments:
http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/Stanley-Jasspon-Kunitz/3527
This is mine.
Fabulous. Earlier this year we saw a three-foot salmon in the creek I ride over on my way to work every day. According to a science friend, it's the first time they've been up this far in years, though they used to always come. So this is a good sign: our creek restoration projects are working. Also: they really do scrape themselves and bleed on the rocks, in the shallow places. That's how much they want to get where they're going.
Puddle, please send me the title. The link didn't quite work.
Tinarama, I can't believe you've seen this in action--not just on the page, but in life! I only see it reinacted metaphorically among my fellow humans in Manhattan.
This poem and the one puddle mentioned, amazing. The link worked for me, it's called: The Science of the Night. I love reading about your world Julie.
Wow. Stanley rocked. I know almost zilch about poetry...but I loved this one.
wow. i'm with marilyn. i know nothing about poetry but that was amazing. love stanley. love him. thanks for posting that and i hope you feel better SOON, my dear.
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