Stanley Kunitz
After The Last Dynasty
Reading in Li Po How “the peach blossom follows the water” I keep thinking of you Because you were so much like Chairman Mao, Naturally with the sex Transposed And the figure slighter. Loving
Father and Son
Now in the suburbs and the falling light I followed him, and now down sandy road Whitter than bone-dust, through the sweet Curdle of fields, where the plums Dropped with their load of ripeness,
The Science Of The Night
I touch you in the night, whose gift was you, My careless sprawler, And I touch you cold, unstirring, star-bemused, That have become the land of your self-strangeness. What long seduction of the bone
The Snakes of September
All 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
Single Vision
Before I am completely shriven I shall reject my inch of heaven. Cancel my eyes, and, standing, sink Into my deepest self; there drink Memory down. The banner of My blood, unfurled, will not
Hornworm: Autumn Lamentation
Since that first morning when I crawled Into the world, a naked grubby thing, And found the world unkind, My dearest faith has been that this Is but a trial: I shall be changed.
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,
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
The Abduction
Some things I do not profess To understand, perhaps Not wanting to, including Whatever it was they did With you or you with them That timeless summer day When you stumbled out of the
First Love
At his incipient sun The ice of twenty winters broke, Crackling, in her eyes. Her mirroring, still mind, That held the world (made double) calm, Went fluid, and it ran. There was a stir
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
Passing Through
Nobody in the widow’s household Ever celebrated anniversaries. In the secrecy of my room I would not admit I cared That my friends were given parties. Before I left town for school My birthday
End of Summer
An agitation of the air, A perturbation of the light Admonished me the unloved year Would turn on its hinge that night. I stood in the disenchanted field Amid the stubble and the stones
Master And Mistress
As if I were composed of dust and air, The shape confronting me upon the stair (Athlete of shadow, lighted by a stain On its disjunctive breast I saw it plain ) Moved through
The Portrait
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. She locked his name In