Thursday Short Poem: Kunitz's "Touch Me"

Continuing the "marital theme" of the week, I've chosen this fine Stanley Kunitz poem.  Kunitz is perhaps our oldest living great American poet; he turned 100 this year.

Touch Me

Summer is late, my heart.
Words plucked out of the air
some forty years ago
when I was wild with love
and torn almost in two
scatter like leaves this night
of whistling wind and rain.
It is my heart that's late,
it is my song that's flown.
Outdoors all afternoon
under a gunmetal sky
staking my garden down,
I kneeled to the crickets trilling
underfoot as if about
to burst from their crusty shells;
and like a child again
marveled to hear so clear
and brave a music pour
from such a small machine.
What makes the engine go?
Desire, desire, desire.
The longing for the dance
stirs in the buried life.
One season only,
and it's done.
So let the battered old willow
thrash against the windowpanes
and the house timbers creak.
Darling, do you remember
the man you married? Touch me,
remind me who I am.

In addition to the stirring final lines, I often remind myself of this great truth:

What makes the engine go?
Desire, desire, desire.

Comments

[Rachel]

Oh, I do love that poem.

Here is another of my favorites, on the marriage theme:

Reshaping each other

We are differently shaped
with everyone we love,
sticking out here, receding
there, interlocking couples.

We grow roles as trees
extrude bark; perhaps
the real life is under
neath in the thin green sap.

I am the finder of things
in drawers; I make lists
and menus; I read maps.
You lift and haul and open.

I select; you reject.
You brood and I fuss.
You dream and I arrange.
You regret and I flee.

If we are yin and yang
it is in a crazy quilt
of push, pull and merge.
Strange as sphinxes,

common as goldfish, neither
alike nor different finally
but ratcheted together
in the gears of marriage.

-- Marge Piercy, from What Are Big Girls Made Of?

[Hugo]

Thank you, Rachel; I love it. I love Marge Piercy's poetry, but am not crazy about her fiction (I used to assign "Woman on the Edge of Time") in my women's studies class, and it wasn't a hit with any of us.)
Now that I think about it, I don't think I've had any Piercy up for my Thursday short poems...)

[Rachel]

I'm not crazy about her fiction, either, and occasionally I find her poetry a little bit sloppy (my tendencies have been towards the spare, of late) but sometimes she's truly fantastic. Ethan and I used this poem in our wedding ceremony, actually, so it has a special place in my heart. :-)

[Academic Coach]

A lovely poem.
And I really liked your article in IHE today. Good to find your site.