Stanley Kunitz

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1. Jug THE SHALE and water thrown together so-so first of all, Then a potter’s hand on the wheel and his fingers shaping the jug; out of the mud a mouth and a handle; Slimpsy, loose and ready to fall at a touch, fire plays on it, slow fire coaxing all the water out of the shale […]...
2. A Tribute to Henry M. Stanley Welcome, thrice welcome, to the city of Dundee, The great African explorer Henry M Stanley, Who went out to Africa its wild regions to explore, And travelled o’er wild and lonely deserts, fatigued and footsore. And what he and his little band suffered will never be forgot, Especially one in particular, Major Edmund Barttelot, Alas! […]...
3. Jesus, Thou Divine Companion Jesus, Thou divine Companion, By Thy lowly human birth Thou hast come to join the workers, Burden bearers of the earth. Thou, the Carpenter of Nazareth, Toiling for Thy daily food, By Thy patience and Thy courage, Thou hast taught us toil is good. They who tread the path of labor Follow where Thy feet […]...
4. Patience, Hard Thing! The Hard Thing But To Pray Patience, hard thing! the hard thing but to pray, But bid for, Patience is! Patience who asks Wants war, wants wounds; weary his times, his tasks; To do without, take tosses, and obey. Rare patience roots in these, and, these away, Nowhere. Natural heart’s ivy, Patience masks Our ruins of wrecked past purpose. There she […]...
5. The Rose Family – Song 1 O flower at my window Why blossom you so fair, With your green and purple cup Upturned to sun and air? ‘I bloom, blithesome Bessie, To cheer your childish heart; The world is full of labor, And this shall be my part.’ Whirl, busy wheel, faster, Spin, little thread, spin; The sun shines fair without, […]...
6. Dream Song 80: Op. posth. no. 3 It’s buried at a distance, on my insistence, buried. Weather’s severe there, which it will not mind. I miss it. O happies before & during & between the times it got married. I hate the love of leaving it behind, Deteriorating & hopeless that. The great Uh climbed above me, far above me, Doing the […]...
7. Patience has a quiet Outer Patience has a quiet Outer Patience Look within Is an Insect’s futile forces Infinites between ‘Scaping one against the other Fruitlesser to fling Patience is the Smile’s exertion Through the quivering...
8. The Playground of Life XIX One hour devoted to the pursuit of Beauty And Love is worth a full century of glory Given by the frightened weak to the strong. From that hour comes man’s Truth; and During that century Truth sleeps between The restless arms of disturbing dreams. In that hour the soul sees for herself The Natural Law, […]...
9. Hymn 122 Believers buried with Christ in baptism. Rom. 6:3,4,etc. Do we not know that solemn word, That we are buried with the Lord, Baptized into his death, and then Put off the body of our sin? Our souls receive diviner breath, Raised from corruption, guilt, and death; So from the grave did Christ arise, And lives […]...
10. Symbol The winter apples have been picked, the garden turned. Rain and wind have picked the maple leaves and gone. The last of them now bank the house or have been burned. None are left upon the trees or on the lawn. Green and tall as ever it grew in spring the grass Grows not too […]...
11. Deceptions “Of course I was drugged, and so heavily I did not regain Consciousness until the next morning. I was horrified to Discover that I had been ruined, and for some days I was inconsolable, And cried like a child to be killed or sent back to my aunt.” Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor […]...
12. Idylls Of The King: Song From The Marriage Of Geraint Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel, and lower the proud; Turn thy wild wheel thro’ sunshine, storm, and cloud; Thy wheel and thee we neither love nor hate. Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel with smile or frown; With that wild wheel we go not up or down; Our hoard is little, but our hearts are great. […]...
13. Retirement O, let me be alone a while, No human form is nigh. And may I sing and muse aloud, No mortal ear is by. Away! ye dreams of earthly bliss, Ye earthly cares begone: Depart! ye restless wandering thoughts, And let me be alone! One hour, my spirit, stretch thy wings, And quit this joyless […]...
14. The Broken Tryst That day a fire was in my blood; I could have sung: joy wrapt me round; The men I met seemed all so good, I scarcely knew I trod the ground. How easy seemed all toil! I laughed To think that once I hated it. The sunlight thrilled like wine, I quaffed Delight, divine and […]...
15. AT MIDNIGHT HOUR [Goethe relates that a remarkable situation He was in one bright moonlight night led to the composition of this Sweet song, which was “the dearer to him because he could not say Whence it came and whither it would.”] AT midnight hour I went, not willingly, A little, little boy, yon churchyard past, To Father […]...
16. Johnnie Sayre Father, thou canst never know The anguish that smote my heart For my disobedience, the moment I felt The remorseless wheel of the engine Sink into the crying flesh of my leg. As they carried me to the home of widow Morris I could see the school-house in the valley To which I played truant […]...
17. To Silvia Silvia, do you remember The moments, in your mortal life, When beauty still shone In your sidelong, laughing eyes, And you, light and thoughtful, Went Beyond girlhood’s limits? The quiet rooms and the streets Around you, sounded To your endless singing, When you sat, happily content, Intent, on that woman’s work, The vague future, arriving […]...
18. A Lost Angel When first we met she seemed so white I feared her; As one might near a spirit bright I neared her; An angel pure from heaven above I dreamed her, And far too good for human love I deemed her. A spirit free from mortal taint I thought her, And incense as unto a saint […]...
19. Sonnet XL: My Heart the Anvil My heart the anvil where my thoughts do beat; My words the hammers fashioning my desire; My breast the forge including all the heat; Love is the fuel which maintains the fire; My sighs the bellows which the flame increaseth, Filling mine ears with noise and nightly groaning; Toiling with pain, my labor never ceaseth, […]...
20. Property The red-roofed house of dream design Looks three ways on the sea; For fifty years I’ve made it mine, And held it part of me. The pines I planted in my youth Triumpantly are tall. . . Yet now I know with sorry sooth I have to leave it all. Hard-hewn from out the living […]...
21. The bow-leg boy Who should come up the road one day But the doctor-man in his two-wheel shay! And he whoaed his horse and he cried “Ahoy! I have brought you folks a bow-leg boy! Such a cute little boy! Such a funny little boy! Such a dear little bow-leg boy!” He took out his box and he […]...
22. San Sepolcro In this blue light I can take you there, Snow having made me a world of bone Seen through to. This is my house, My section of Etruscan wall, my neighbor’s Lemontrees, and, just below the lower church, The airplane factory. A rooster Crows all day from mist outside the walls. There’s milk on the […]...
23. Stafford's Cabin Once there was a cabin here, and once there was a man; And something happened here before my memory began. Time has made the two of them the fuel of one flame And all we have of them is now a legend and a name. All I have to say is what an old man […]...
24. The Apartment House Severe against the pleasant arc of sky The great stone box is cruelly displayed. The street becomes more dreary from its shade, And vagrant breezes touch its walls and die. Here sullen convicts in their chains might lie, Or slaves toil dumbly at some dreary trade. How worse than folly is their labor made Who […]...
25. Our Eyes Our eyes are limpid drops of water. In each drop exists a tiny sign of our genius Which has given life to cold iron. Our eyes are limpid drops of water Merged absolutely in the Ocean That you could hardly recognize the drop in a block of ice in a boiling pan. The masterpiece of […]...
26. Keepsake Mill Over the borders, a sin without pardon, Breaking the branches and crawling below, Out through the breach in the wall of the garden, Down by the banks of the river we go. Here is a mill with the humming of thunder, Here is the weir with the wonder of foam, Here is the sluice with […]...
27. To Leonide Massine in 'Cleopatra&#039 O beauty doomed and perfect for an hour, Leaping along the verge of death and night, You show me dauntless Youth that went to fight Four long years past, discovering pride and power. You die but in our dreams, who watch you fall Knowing that to-morrow you will dance again. But not to ebbing music […]...
28. Then And Now Beneath her window in the fragrant night I half forget how truant years have flown Since I looked up to see her chamber-light, Or catch, perchance, her slender shadow thrown Upon the casement; but the nodding leaves Sweep lazily across the unlit pane, And to and fro beneath the shadowy eaves, Like restless birds, the […]...
29. If He were living dare I ask If He were living dare I ask And how if He be dead And so around the Words I went Of meeting them afraid I hinted Changes Lapse of Time The Surfaces of Years I touched with Caution lest they crack And show me to my fears Reverted to adjoining Lives Adroitly turning out Wherever […]...
30. Dillard Sissman The buzzards wheel slowly In wide circles, in a sky Faintly hazed as from dust from the road. And a wind sweeps through the pasture where I lie Beating the grass into long waves. My kite is above the wind, Though now and then it wobbles, Like a man shaking his shoulders; And the tail […]...
31. The Consecrating Mother I stand before the sea And it rolls and rolls in its green blood Saying, “Do not give up one god For I have a handful.” The trade winds blew In their twelve-fingered reversal And I simply stood on the beach While the ocean made a cross of salt And hung up its drowned And […]...
32. The Houses ‘Twixt my house and thy house the pathway is broad, In thy house or my house is half the world’s hoard; By my house and thy house hangs all the world’s fate, On thy house and my house lies half the world’s hate. For my house and thy house no help shall we find Save […]...
33. 1926 The porchlight coming on again, Early November, the dead leaves Raked in piles, the wicker swing Creaking. Across the lots A phonograph is playing Ja-Da. An orange moon. I see the lives Of neighbors, mapped and marred Like all the wars ahead, and R. Insane, B. with his throat cut, Fifteen years from now, in […]...
34. Epilogue Patience, little Heart. One day a heavy, June-hot woman Will enter and shut the door to stay. And when your stifling heart would summon Cool, lonely night, her roused breasts will keep the night at bay, Sitting in your room like two tiger-lilies Flaming on after sunset, Destroying the cool, lonely night with the glow […]...
35. Ridden Down When I taught Ida how to ride a Bicycle that night, I ran beside her, just to guide her Erring wheel aright; And many times there in the street She rode upon my weary feet. But now can Ida mount and ride a Wheel with graceful ease, And I, untiring in admiring, Fall upon my […]...
36. Patience Be patient with you? When the stooping sky Leans down upon the hills And tenderly, as one who soothing stills An anguish, gathers earth to lie Embraced and girdled. Do the sun-filled men Feel patience then? Be patient with you? When the snow-girt earth Cracks to let through a spurt Of sudden green, and from […]...
37. Ikon: The Harrowing of Hell Down through the tomb’s inward arch He has shouldered out into Limbo To gather them, dazed, from dreamless slumber: The merciful dead, the prophets, The innocents just His own age and those Unnumbered others waiting here Unaware, in an endless void He is ending Now, stooping to tug at their hands, To pull them from […]...
38. Autumn in the Garden When the frosty kiss of Autumn in the dark Makes its mark On the flowers, and the misty morning grieves Over fallen leaves; Then my olden garden, where the golden soil Through the toil Of a hundred years is mellow, rich, and deep, Whispers in its sleep. ‘Mid the crumpled beds of marigold and phlox, […]...
39. In Memory of Maggie A pussy-cat who was the household pet for seventeen years. Naught but a little cat, you say; Yet we remember her, A creature loving, loyal, kind, With merry, mellow purr; The faithful friend of many years, Shall we not give her meed of tears? Sleek-suited in her velvet coat, White-breasted and bright-eyed, Feeling when she […]...
40. The Poet Only on me, the lonely one, The unending stars of the night shine, The stone fountain whispers its magic song, To me alone, to me the lonely one The colorful shadows of the wandering clouds Move like dreams over the open countryside. Neither house nor farmland, Neither forest nor hunting privilege is given to me, […]...