Live in the layers,
not on the litter.
~ Stanley Kunitz
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Quoted from Stanley Kunitz, "The Layers" in The Collected Poems of Stanley Kunitz (W.W. Norton, 1978; 2002)
Stanley Kunitz (1905-2006), 10th U.S. Poet Laureate
Theresa Riley, "A Poet a Day: Stanley Kunitz" at Bill Moyers (Introductory Text and Video)
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1 comment:
I have a poem for you-- so that you have it I'll paste it in here and hope it holds format....let me know what you think--4 Mary Mary...
The Transfiguration of Maria Magdalena
Once long ago
in the dusk, the shadows
of a mud and straw farmhouse
in the well-grazed hills of Samaria
I, now Archangel Magdelena
in my Love of Love's arms,
was in labor;
He kissed my hair and I pressed on:
then born unto us, the tiniest one
imaginable, a baby girl with the voice
of a sparrow, the thinnest cry
I, new mother, could not bear to still
against my breast
because it seemed the tremulous high voice
of a cherub.
We had come to the hamlet in the hills
to be out of reach of enemies, skeptics,
persecution, priests and the edicts of Pilate,
wary disciples keeping watch
costumed as shepherds
who had been uneasy
with the carnal hungers
of our Lord,
for imagine the virility
of God himself--
et incarnatus est!
and the depths of desire
of I who loved Him.
Oh history, oh sorrow.
We, you and I, know where this goes:
in mere hours, having wept in Gethsemane,
so made of love for all the mortal world
He was lost unto me and we thought,
unto us all.
Indeed I was that Mary, the excoriated one;
yet my Lord transfigured me with his very touch,
his hands and fingers of light;
he loved me and I wept;
we were of each other and I felt all
that came to pass;
his stigmata were mine.
But then joy of joys,
after the day of horror.
When I went to the tomb
with the other women
to find it open,
suddenly greatest light poured from it
filling the village and then
the firmament
until all of the angels came singing
weeping tears of joy--
the great, blazing air
even filling me, healing my grief,
cleansing me of sorrow!
And then I knew it as my love and Lord
and she who became Sparrow of Magdalena
would sit near the well at day's end,
even as an exquisite child,
her small face caressed
by the descending sun.
Jenne' R. Andrews
for the "Mary Mary" Challenge...
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