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| In the long teeth of the woods |
At the threshold of the last mystery,
I have made a tribe of myself
out of my true affections,
widely scattered on the hillside,
burning space and time.
In this separate wilderness of age,
where the old libidinous beasts
pretend to be tamed,
how shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
By birdsong and weather,
walking the old farm road
into the long teeth of the woods,
thinking of those who fell along the way,
clouds take me by the hand.
I'm passing through, my will intact,
every stem and stone precious,
not done yet with change,
and can scarcely wait
for tomorrow.
—a cento of lines from Stanley Kunitz's (1905-2006) Passing Through:
The Later Poems, New and Selected, W.W. Norton, 1995
