LitLetter 195: Stanley Kunitz's poem, The Layers

A treatise on change in one's life

Complexity

The network of poem sharing, suggesting, and forwarding is healthy, and global. Social media helps hugely in this positive effort, and the ready availability of access to the internet via hand-held devices. Is the appetite for poetry increasing? It probably is. Certainly, since I started posting The LitLetter, the interest has been stronger as time has passed.

These two aspects of poetry – its intrinsic attractiveness and its propensity for being shared – are present in this week’s poem. Mentioned to me by a friend, who received it from a client, who…the chain could go on forever. I was aware of the poem but its way of finding me has caused me to write about it today.

It is The Layers by Stanley Kunitz.

This powerful poem, replete with longing, fulfills the main purposes of a poem. It tells a short story on a topic of interest to many people, in language that is carefully chosen to condense the meaning into the fewest words, sort of less is more, or the power of brevity. This poem also captures a piece of wisdom, perhaps eternal (in this case, yes), immersing the reader in a comprehensive effect of satisfaction, memorability, insightfulness to a deeper dimension of thought, and spiritual peace. ‘Ah ha’, the reader may say, ‘that makes sense!’

The Layers by Stanley Kunitz

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.

The first five lines are indisputable. ‘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.’ How else does one describe in 30 words the passage of one’s life? One does not need to be in the later stages of life to realise that the ten year-old person in the photograph  is me – and yet not me, for now I am 20 years, or more, and am different, changed, grown up. It is sometimes intolerable for older people who look back down their lives and can feel a strong sense of disassociation from the memoried persons they are supposed to have been. Stanley claims that some principle of being abides, some thread of consciousness from which he struggles not to stray. His identity as Stanley Kunitz.

The Ian Widdop writing here is unimaginably changed from that of the Ian Widdop starting grammar school 57 years ago. This must be the case for most of us. Ian pays homage to that long distant little chap, and understands Stanley’s reference to walking through many lives, not all his own, but certainly some of them. How many lives do we live in our life?

And, though this may be a topic for another address, how do we identify ourselves through these years? Through the plethora of changes and of self-definition? I must say I have sympathy with people today reanalysing themselves and transitioning into other personalities.

Then Stanley hits hard – ‘When I look behind, as I must do’ – we all feel emotion, both lovely and dire, at the memories of milestones set and passed, not necessarily successfully. How resolutely do we confront our past failures? Do we summon the courage to debrief and review the lessons learnt, that we might improve in future? Why, only now in my life, am I reading weekly material on how to make sound decisions and good choices? In the past, this was down to chance, at best to an inspired intuition.

Stanley declares himself to have made a tribe of his true affections and that tribe is scattered. This is grim as it refers to his dead friends whose ‘manic dust’ swirls in his face. And then another killer question: ‘How shall the heart be reconciled/to its feast of losses?’ The real answer is with very great difficulty, if at all. Some of this tribe will have died; others will have disappeared. The only consolation for the poet is that he at least is still alive which causes him a thrill of exultation. His will is still intact, and in the end, it is this faculty that holds him as he trudges through wreckage, onh his darkest night with the moon covered over to hear a voice from the clouds:

       ‘Live in the layers, not on the litter’.

This is an example of the wisdom in a poem that I mentioned earlier. This, to me, is 24 carat material. The meaning of complex is multi-layered, and the layers are where complexity exists. Where all things can align together if one wills it, where polarities do not exist, where ‘and’ has meaning and ‘but’ only obstructs and excludes, these are the zones of life and thinking to barrier ourselves from the broken and misinterpreted identities we once had, likewise friends, likewise other tribe members. The litter is, well, litter. It is trivial, meaningless, without substance.

Stanley actually knows well he has the wit to decipher this saw. For he says: ‘no doubt the next chapter/in my book of transformations/is already written.’ Can we all know that this is true, is how it must be? That impermanence is everywhere, that our meaning does not lie in our identity, it lies in our mutability.

The majesty of Kunitz’s poetry, its sonorousness and steady pace rolling forth rather like the journey it describes, its rhythm tied inexorably to the chance of man being alive and dead, being subject to a playbook script beyond his ken no matter how hard he tries, and can only accept with grace as best he can, all of this hidden charm and beauty in an otherwise rather forbidding poem is finally encapsulated in the eight syllables of the final line:

       ‘I am not done with my changes.’

Kunitz himself said of this poem that it marked the end of a passage of his life in which he had lost many good friends. He was in his late 70s at the writing of this poem; he lived to the age of 100, dying two months before his 101st birthday. He also wrote that ‘Live in the layers, not on the litter’ was manifested to him in a dream.

I wish all people in transition and pondering that state blessings on their reflection and decisions.