Stanley Kunitz: Two poems

American Poetry Review, The, Jul 1995 by Kunitz, Stanley

Here in caterpillar country

I learned ho to survive

by pretending to be a dragon.

See me put; on that look

of slow and fierce surprise

when I lift my bulbous head

and glare at an intruder.

Nobody seems to guess

how gentle I really am,

content most of the time

simply to disappear

by melting into the scenery.

Smooth and fatty and long,

with seven white stripes

painted on either side

and a sharp little horn for a tail,

I lie stretched out on a leaf,

pale green on my bed of green,

munching, munching.

Hornworm: Autumn Lamentation

Since that first morning when I crawled

into the world, a naked grubby thing,

and found the world unkind,

my dearest faith has been that this

is but a trial: I shall be changed.

In my imaginings I have already spent

my sightless winter underground,

unfolded silky powdered wings

and climbed into the air

to sail over the steaming fields,

alighting anywhere I pleased,

thrusting into deep tubular flowers.

It is not so: there may be nectar

in those cups, but not for me.

All day, all night, I carry on my back

embedded in my flesh, two rows

of little white cocoons,

so neatly stacked

they look like eggs in a crate.

And I am eaten half away.

If I can gather strength enough I'll try to burrow under a stone

and spin myself a purse

in which to sleep away the cold;

though when the sun kisses the earth

again, I know I won't be there.

Instead, out of my chrysalis

will break, like robbers from a tomb,

a swarm of parasitic flies,

leaving my wasted husk behind.

Sir, you with the red snippers

in your hand, hovering over me,

casting your shadow, I greet you,

whether you come as an angel of death

or of mercy. But tell me,

before you choose to slice me in two:

Who can understand the ways

of the Great Worm in the sky?

Stanley Kunitz's latest book, Passing Through: The Later Poems, New and Selected, will be published by Norton in October. In 1993, the National Medal of Arts was presented to him by President Bill Clinton at the White House. This spring he received the Shelley Memorial Award.