The best poems are the ones you stumble upon by accident and which say to you just exactly what it is you need to hear at that particular moment in time. An illuminated wisdom that awes every word. Like this one ~
Wait - Galway Kinnell
Wait, for now.
Distrust everything if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven’t they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become interesting.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again;
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. The desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.
Wait.
Don’t go too early.
You’re tired. But everyone’s tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a little and listen:
music of hair,
music of pain,
music of looms weaving our love again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.
I love this - it's so crashing and dramatic but it hangs on the very smallest of things - hair, a glove, a bud. Just lovely.
ReplyDeleteYes, you're right Cheryl. I love its little details, which are so much more than little. Very good poem, discovered by accident!
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