In A Rising Wind

Contrary to popular belief right now, this is not a time to listen to politicians, hacks, miscreants, idiots, and narcissists.  This is the time for poets.  The demoralized and exhausted people need words to lift their spirits.  We need art, literature and culture, the kind that celebrate our humanity, our uniqueness, our spirit, our collective consciousness.

This may seem counter-intuitive.  Things are changing so fast and every moment is a “breaking news” moment.  But this is a time to look up; this is a time for the bigger picture.  Empires fall, humanity and nature remain.  We must have the patience and fortitude to see this through and know that there is a distant road, a time after all of this hoopla.  The world’s story is long and the ending has not yet been written.

In that spirit of looking up, I return to a favorite poem by Stanley Kunitz entitled “The Layers.”  Kunitz’s life was marked by tragedy even before he was born.  His father, a Russian Jew who eked out a living as a dressmaker in Massachusetts, suffered death by suicide after filing for bankruptcy.  He died in a public park after drinking acid.  His distraught mother removed all traces of her husband from the family home.  Kunitz often cited his father’s act as a defining influence on his life and work.

Financial hardship followed the family as did tragedy:  Kunitz’s stepfather died of a heart attack when his stepson was only fourteen.  The boy had several jobs in his younger years to support himself and his family.  He went on to graduate with distinction from Harvard University, however, when he inquired about enrolling for a doctoral degree, he was told that no white Protestant students would like to be taught by a Jew.  Instead, he entered the professional workforce and held a number of jobs involving writing and editing.  During the Second World War, he served in a noncombatant position after declaring himself a conscientious objector.  Mainly, he acted as a teacher, and that was the job he sought after the war.

He wrote a number of books of poetry and prose, and was named Poet Laureate by the Library of Congress twice in 1974 and 2000.  Here, then, is “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 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.

Indeed, are we ever done with the changes?  Of change, death is just one more.  We could say, then, that change is all of life.

May we have the courage and fortitude to be moral, to have empathy, to pursue the truth.  We must find the strength, in the winds of change, to stand. There is no other way.