Two
selections from a poem by Galway Kinnell, writing
about his mother in "The Last Hiding Place of Snow":
Once
in a while, passing the place,
I
have imagined I heard
my
old mother calling, thinking out loud her
mother-love
toward me, over those many miles
from
where her bones lie,
five
years
in
earth now, with my father's thirty-years' bones.
I
have always felt
anointed
by her love, its light
like
sunlight
falling
through broken panes
onto
the floor
of
a deserted house: we may go, it remains,
telling
of goodness of being, of permanence.
So
lighted I have believed
I
could wander anywhere,
among
any foulness, any contagions,
I
could climb through the entire empty world
and
find my way back and learn to be happy.
[later
in the same poem]:
Even
now when I wake at night
in
some room far from everyone,
the
darkness sometimes
lightens
a little, and then,
because
of nothing,
in
spite of nothing,
in
an imaginary daybreak, I see her,
and
for that moment I am still her son
and
I am in the holy land
and
twice in the holy land, remembered
within
her, and remembered in the memory
her
old body slowly executes into the earth.
After Making Love We Hear Footsteps
|
|
For I can snore like a bullhorn
or play loud music
or sit up talking with any reasonably sober Irishman
and Fergus will only sink deeper
into his dreamless sleep, which goes by all in one flash,
but let there be that heavy breathing
or a stifled come-cry anywhere in the house
and he will wrench himself awake
and make for it on the run - as now, we lie together,
after making love, quiet, touching along the length of our
bodies,
familiar touch of the long-married,
and he appears - in his baseball pajamas, it happens,
the neck opening so small
he has to screw them on, which one day may make him wonder
about the mental capacity of baseball players -
and flops down between us and hugs us and snuggles himself
to sleep,
his face gleaming with satisfaction at being this very
child.
In the half darkness we look at each other
and smile
and touch arms across his little, startling muscled body -
this one whom habit of memory propels to the ground of his
making,
sleeper only the mortal sounds can sing awake,
this blessing love gives again into our arms.
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.
Wait
by
Wait, for now.
Distrust everything, if you have to.
But trust the hours.
Haven't they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become lovely again.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again,
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands.
And the desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.
Wait.
Don't go too early.
You're tired. But everyone's tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a while and listen.
Music of hair,
Music of pain,
music of looms weaving all our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear,
the flute of your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.
|
No comments:
Post a Comment