The Layers

Władysław Podkowiński

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


I'm not sure what "living in the layers" exactly means, but I like this looking back over abandoned campsites, and the feast of losses, and this wonderful line - "Yet I turn, I turn, exulting somewhat, with my will intact to go wherever I need to go". That idea of acknowledging loss and change and then deliberately turning to face more, speaks to me. "Every stone in the road is precious to me" reminds me of when God told the Israelites, "Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you." (Joshua 1:3) Which just expands the sense of progress into one of ownership. Do the losses become a kind of gain?