The Round

Ivan Kulikov, "Evgeny Chirikov"

 

The Round

Light splashed this morning

on the shell-pink anenomes

swaying on their tall stems

down blue-spiked veronica

light flowed in rivulets

over the humps of the honeybees;

this morning I saw light kiss

the silk of the roses

in their second flowering,

my late bloomers,

flushed 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-dark

hunched over my desk

with nothing for a view

to tempt me

but a bloated compost-heap,

steamy old stink-pile ,

under my window;

and I pick my notebook up

and I start to read aloud

the still-wet words I scribbled

on the blotted page:

"Light splashed..."

I can scarcely wait for tomorrow

when a new life begins for me,

as it does each day,

as it does each day.

Stanley Kunitz

from Passing Through: The Later Poems, New and Selected

This poem shows us the double life of the writer. In order to do his work he has to leave the beauty of the garden and enclose himself in a “cell”, that is, cut himself off from life in order to re-create or capture it. It’s a divided existence. The translation of thought to page requires concentration, isolation, and yet he needs that vital connection to the world. It’s a very individual back-and-forth struggle. I say struggle because being pulled between two worlds is not easy. But Kunitz, acknowledging this, is nonetheless full of anticipation. His time away, like his time with the flowers, has infused him with “a curious gladness”, a sense of there being more, of things being new every day. New light, new colours, new flowers. May his anticipation for beginning again be ours as well.

 

Parting

Theodor Kittelsen

Parting 

 

Parting, I take with me completed June,
My treasury of time, hoarded intact;
Eventual winds will not dissolve a tune
Of solid air, the body of this fact.
Mind's acres are forever green: Oh, I
Shall keep perpetual summer here; I shall
Refuse to let one startled swallow die,
Or, from the copper beeches, one leaf fall. 

Here, vagrant from confusion, I shall greet
My youth immaculate in memory's urn;
This is my country, where the tireless feet
Of my adventure, homing, will return.
Each day will end in this day; every ship
Will bring me back, bright lip on lonely lip. 

Stanley Kunitz 

I was hoping I could get another "Green" poem in - and here it is! It was a wonderful summer, and I don't want to let it go, so I love how Kunitz talks about storing time up in a treasury. "Mind's acres are forever green...I shall keep perpetual summer here..." Yes, I can do that, I can keep it with me, in my mind. Or, in turn, I can go there, to "my country", "every ship will bring me back." I also am struck by that word "homing". I've never seen it used quite this way. Is that it - is it that we are all "homing" - looking for that green place and time we once were (or that we never have been but have always longed for), that essential place of life and growth and balance - that Eden Country we all belong to? How wonderful.

Stanley Kunitz writes exceptionally well about these in-between moments, looking back while committing to go on. I posted his poem "The Layers" on January 16, 2017, worth a re-read, if you ask me.





 

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?