Stanley Kunitz (1905-2006)

[jthserra]

Laureate
...........For Stanley Kunitz

A patience in the rush of worlds,
slow footprints on a moving ground,
sometimes forward, sometimes not,
you remember Halley's Comet.
Its first passing this century
brought you such excitement
and fear, fear, fear for the world
as you shouted from rooftops
to a father you never knew.

Surviving time, you heralded
the passing of friends and Presidents,
of peace and wars, of generations.
In your gentle compendium of words
you grasp life, unfold it, search it
and read it back to us verse by verse.
Now, at ninety-five, Poet Laureate,
you define the time at your own pace,
as speed is relative in a poet's hands.

James M. Thompson

 

[sugarmountain]

Thank you

for this thread...I have not heard of him before (shame on me)

Here is one of his:

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 of music,
Mixed with flowers, in her blood;
A swift impulsive balm

From obscure roots;
Gold bees of clinging light
Swarmed in her brow.

Her throat is full of songs,
She hums, she is sensible of wings
Growing on her heart.

She is a tree in spring
Trembling with the hope of leaves,
Of which the leaves are tongues.

Stanley Kunitz

 

[TheRainMan]

Here is one of his . . .

. . . and another:


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 went up in smoke
in a fire at City Hall that gutted
the Department of Vital Statistics.
If it weren't for a census report
of a five-year-old White Male
sharing my mother's address
at the Green Street tenement in Worcester
I'd have no documentary proof
that I exist. You are the first,
my dear, to bully me
into these festive occasions.

Sometimes, you say, I wear
an abstracted look that drives you
up the wall, as though it signified
distress or disaffection.
Don't take it so to heart.
Maybe I enjoy not-being as much
as being who I am. Maybe
it's time for me to practice
growing old. The way I look
at it, I'm passing through a phase:
gradually I'm changing to a word.
Whatever you choose to claim
of me is always yours:
nothing is truly mine
except my name. I only
borrowed this dust.

Stanley Kunitz

r.i.p.

 

[Willows_Tears]

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 of music,
Mixed with flowers, in her blood;
A swift impulsive balm

From obscure roots;
Gold bees of clinging light
Swarmed in her brow.

Her throat is full of songs,
She hums, she is sensible of wings
Growing on her heart.

She is a tree in spring
Trembling with the hope of leaves,
Of which the leaves are tongues.