What I remember most was not the incident at Sarajevo, but the first flying steamkettle puffing round the bend, churning up the dirt between the rocky pastures as it came riding high on its red wheels in a blare of shining brass; and my bay stallion snorting, rearing in fright, bolting, leaving me sprawled on […]
The Layers by Stanley Kunitz
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 […]
The Portrait by Stanley Kunitz
My mother never forgave my father for killing himself, especially at such an awkward time and in a public park, chat spring when I was waiting to be born. She locked his name in her deepest cabinet and would not let him out, though I could hear him thumping. When I came down from the […]
The Round by Stanley Kunitz
Light splashed this morning on the shell-pink anemones swaying on their call stems; down blue-spiked Veronica light flowed in rivulets over the humps of the honeybees; this morning I saw light kiss the silk of the roses in their second flowering, my late bloomers flushed with their brandy. A curious gladness shook me. So I […]
The Snakes of September by Stanley Kunitz
All summer I heard them rustling in the shrubbery, outracing me from tier to tier in my garden, a whisper among the viburnums, a signal flashed from the hedgerow, a shadow pulsing in the barberry thicket. Now that the nights are chill and the annuals spent, I should have thought them gone, in a torpor […]