“The Layers”. Copyright (C) 1978 by Stanley Kunitz, from THE COLLECTED POEMS by Stanley Kunitz. Used by permission of W.W. Norton and Company, Inc.

Stanley Kunitz was a 20th/21st- century American poet, named American Poet Laureate in 2000.

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 campsites

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 sting 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 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.