12 May 2006

Stanley Kunitz

[from Stanley Kunitz's The Collected Poems]

excerpt from Revolving Meditation

Imagination cries
That in the grand accountancy
What happens to us is false;
Imagination makes,
Out of what stuff it can,
An action fit
For a more heroic stage
Than body ever walked on.
I have learned
Trying to live
With this perjured quid of mine,
That the truth is not in the stones,
But in the architecture;
Equally, I am not deceived
By the triumph of the stuffing
Over the chair.
If I must build a church,
Though I do not really want one,
Let it be in the wilderness
Out of nothing but nail-holes.



4 comments:

  1. f I must build a church,
    Though I do not really want one,
    Let it be in the wilderness
    Out of nothing but nail-holes.


    What can I do with this but clap and clap and breathe!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for this.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I am reading this just now on July 4 (fifty years or more of S Kunitz poems)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Do you go to Fairfax or D.C. to do readings?

    ReplyDelete