The Portrait - Stanley Kunitz

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 her deepest cabinet
and would not let him out,
though I could hear him thumping.
When I came down from the attic
with the pastel portrait in my hand
of a long-lipped stranger
with a brave moustache
and deep brown level eyes,
she ripped it into shreds
without a single word
and slapped me hard.
In my sixty-fourth year
I can feel my cheek
still burning.

Stanley Jasspon Kunitz (b. 29 July 1905 in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA Died 14 May 2006 in New York City, New York, USA)

Read also
The Layers
Passing Through
A Zanga / The Quarrell

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The Layers - Stanley Kunitz

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 behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
“Live in the layers,
not on the litter.”
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

from The Collected Poems of Stanley Kunitz (W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 2002)

Stanley Jasspon Kunitz (b. 29 July 1905 in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA Died 14 May 2006 in New York City, New York, USA)

Read also Passing Through

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A Zanga / The Quarrell - Stanley Kunitz

A palavra que disse em raiva
pesa menos que uma semente de salsa,
mas por ela passa a estrada
que leva à minha sepultura,
naquele talhão comprado
nas encostas salgadas de Truro
onde os pinheiros dominam a baía.
Estou já meio-morto que chegue,
desviado da minha própria natureza
e da minha força de viver.
Se pudesse chorar, chorava.
Mas sou velho demais para ser
a criança de alguém.
Liebchen,
com quem me vou zangar
senão nos murmúrios do amor,
essa chama áspera e irregular?
Poema extraído daqui

The Quarrell

The word I spoke in anger
weighs less than a parsley seed,
but a road runs through it
that leads to my grave,
that bought-and-paid-for lot
on a salt-sprayed hill in Truro
where the scrub pines
overlook the bay.
Half-way I'm dead enough,
strayed from my own nature
and my fierce hold on life.
If I could cry, I'd cry,
but I'm too old to be
anybody's child.
Liebchen,
with whom should I quarrel
except in the hiss of love,
that harsh, irregular flame?

Stanley Jasspon Kunitz (n. 29 Jul 1905 em Worcester, Massachusetts, USA; f. 14 Mai 2006 na cidade de Nova York, USA)

Read More...

The Layers - Stanley Kunitz

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 behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

Poem from here
Stanley Jasspon Kunitz (b. 29 July 1905 in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA Died 14 May 2006 in New York City, New York, USA)

Read also Passing Through

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Passing Through - Stanley Kunitz

—on my seventy-ninth birthday

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.

From here
Stanley Jasspon Kunitz (b. 29 July 1905 in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA – d. 14 May 2006 New York City, New York, USA)

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