Stanley Kunitz Quotes | Quotes of famous people

Famous Stanley Kunitz Quotes

“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 campsites
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."”

Stanley Kunitz

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. Poems, The Layers Source: "The Layers" by Stanley Kunitz [Click here for video version on YouTube as read by the author https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wk6xW41EFoA ]

“Live in the layers,
not on the litter.”

Stanley Kunitz

From poem "The Layers" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wk6xW41EFoA by Stanley Kunitz