Galway Kinnell

“When I sleepwalkinto your room, and pick you up,and hold you up in the moonlight, you cling to mehard,as if clinging could save us. I thinkyou thinkI will never die, I think I exudeto you the permanence of smoke or stars,even asmy broken arms heal themselves around you.”

“RaptureI can feel she has got out of bed.That means it is seven a.m.I have been lying with eyes shut,thinking, or possibly dreaming,of how she might look if, at breakfast,I spoke about the hidden place in herwhich, to me, is like a soprano’s tremolo,and right then, over toast and bramble jelly,if such things are possible, she came.I imagine she would show it while trying to conceal it.I imagine her hair would fall about her faceand she would become apparently downcast,as she does at a concert when she is moved.The hypnopompic play passes, and I open my eyesand there she is, next to the bed,bending to a low drawer, picking overvarious small smooth black, white,and pink items of underwear. She bendsso low her back runs parallel to the earth,but there is no sway in it, there is little burden, the day has hardly begun.The two mounds of muscles for walking, leaping, lovemaking,lift toward the east—what can I say?Simile is useless; there is nothing like them on earth.Her breasts fall full; the nipplesare deep pink in the glare shining up through the iron barsof the gate under the earth where those who could not lovepress, wanting to be born again.I reach out and take her wristand she falls back into bed and at once starts unbuttoning my pajamas.Later, when I open my eyes, there she is again,rummaging in the same low drawer.The clock shows eight. Hmmm.With huge, silent effort of great,mounded muscles the earth has been turning.She takes a piece of silken clothfrom the drawer and stands up. Under the fallsof hair her face has become quiet and downcast,as if she will be, all day among strangers,looking down inside herself at our rapture.”

“The wages of dying are love.”

“Never mind. The self is the least of it. Let our scars fall in love”

“You liveunder the Signof the Bear, who flounders through chaosin his starry blubber:poor fool, poor forked branchof applewood, you will feel all your bones breakover the holy waters you will never drink.”

“Sometimes it is necessaryTo reteach a thing its loveliness”

“...it is necessaryto reteach a thing its loveliness,to put a hand on its browof the flowerand retell it in words and in touchit is lovelyuntil it flowers again from within, of self-blessing...”

“Little sleep's-head sprouting hair in the moonlight,when I come backwe will go out together,we will walk out together among,the ten thousand things,each scratched too late with such knowledge, the wages of dying is love.”

“There are two versions to every poem – the crying version and the straight version”

“Let our scars fall in love.”

“The first step ... shall be to lose the way.”

“When a group of people get up from a table, the table doesn’tknow which way any of them will go.”

“WaitWait, for now.Distrust everything, if you have to.But trust the hours. Haven't theycarried 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 themthe need for other hands. And the desolationof lovers is the same: that enormous emptinesscarved out of such tiny beings as we areasks to be filled; the needfor 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.”

“This happened to your father and to you, Galway-sick to stay, longingto come up against the ends of the earth, and climb over.”

“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.”

“Turn on the dream you livedthrough the unwavering gaze. It is as you thought: the living burn.In the floating days may you discover grace.”

“To me, poetry is somebody standing up, so to speak, and saying, with as little concealment as possible, what it is for him or her to be on earth at this moment”

“Prose is walking; poetry is flying”