The Layers - Poetic Openings

The Layers

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 dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

— Stanley Kunitz from The Collected Poems of Stanley Kunitz

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Stanley Kunitz was in his seventies when he wrote this poem, and he still had many changes to traverse before he died at the age of 100 in 2006. With great dignity, he speaks here of the losses he has known and what it is that survives when all else is gone. Everything passes. Is it sad? Is it a relief? Sometimes one, sometimes the other. Is there anything, then, that abides? For Kunitz, there is “some principle of being” from which he struggles not to stray. The enigmatic lines near the end of the poem –

Live in the layers,
Not in the litter

came to him one night at the end of a terrifying dream, a voice from out of a cloud speaking a riddle as strange as any from the Delphic oracle of Greece. He woke immediately and wrote down those lines. Soon afterward, the whole poem flowed from these two lines.

Warmly, Roger Housden

roger@rogerhousden.com

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From Richard:

Daily be aware of your guiding principles. Are they in the rear or in the front? Do they pull you  forward or hold you back?

Is the liter of past actions and events an attractor factor for this day's mental focus? Regrets, recriminations, and could have beens?

Release yourself from this bondage with your next breath.  Perhaps say to yourself in coordination with the breath cycle “Letting Go”  --- with the inhale saying “Letting” and with the exhale “Go”. Do this for the next 5-10 breaths. Then sit in silence for a moment and feel the release.

Self perceived baggage from the past is like having to carry around a large, heavy backpack.  Every time you think of something of later days with a negative view it is like putting another weighted object in that already over stuffed, supper heavy pack. It is hard to breath carrying so much weight.

Why not sit down for a moment and unpack it. Leave some, or all, of it by the road now. And when you are ready, stand up and renew your journey with a lighter load.

As Kuntiz writes in the poem, come to live in the layers of the forward journey and not the liter of the past.