From an email from Larry Kunofsky:
Stanley Kunitz died. He was 100 years old. I heard him read once and if I live to be 100 I still won't forget that night.
If the following is not my favorite poem of all time, at the very least, I can't love another poem more than this one:
Touch Me Summer is late, my heart. Words plucked out of the air some forty years ago when I was wild with love and torn almost in two scatter like leaves this night of whistling wind and rain. It is my heart that's late, it is my song that's flown. Outdoors all afternoon under a gunmetal sky staking my garden down, I kneeled to the crickets trilling underfoot as if about to burst from their crusty shells; and like a child again marveled to hear so clear and brave a music pour from such a small machine. What makes the engine go? Desire, desire, desire. The longing for the dance stirs in the buried life. One season only, and it's done. So let the battered old willow thrash against the windowpanes and the house timbers creak. Darling, do you remember the man you married? Touch me, remind me who I am.
Stanley Kunitz
My god ,that is so beautiful.
ReplyDeleteIt made me cry.