A Great Poem by America's Great Poet

The Still Time

by Galway Kinnell

I know there is still time -

time for the hands

to open, for the bones of them

to be filled

by those failed harvests of want,

the bread imagined of the days of not having.

Now that the fear

has been rummaged down to its husk,

and the wind blowing

the flesh away translates itself

into flesh and the flesh

gives itself in its reveries to the wind.

I remember those summer nights

when I was young and empty,

when I lay through the darkness

wanting, wanting,

knowing

I would have nothing if anything I wanted -

that total craving

that hollows the heart out irreversibly.

So it surprises me now to hear

the steps of my life following me -

so much of it gone

it returns, everything that drove me crazy

comes back, blessing the misery

of each step it took me into the world;

as though a prayer had ended

and the bit of changed air

between the palms goes free

to become the glitter

on some common thing that inexplicably shines.

And the old voice,

which once made its broken-off, choked, parrot-incoherences,

speaks again,

this time on the palatum cordis

this time saying there is time, still time,

for one who can groan

to sing,

for one who can sing to be healed.