That Silent Evening

I will go back to that silent evening when we lay together and talked in silent voices, while outside slow lumps of soft snow fell, hushing as they got near the ground, with a fire in the room, in which centuries of tree went up in continuous ghost-giving-up, without a crackle, into morning light.

Not until what hastens went slower did we sleep.

When we got home we turned and looked back at our tracks twining out of the woods, where the branches we brushed against let fall puffs of sparkling snow, quickly, in silence, like stolen kisses, and where the scritch scritch scritch among the trees, which is the sound that dies inside the sparks from the wedge when the sledge hits it off center telling everything inside it is fire, jumped to a black branch, puffed up but without arms and so to our eyes lonesome, and yet also--how can we know this?--happy!

in shape of chickadee. Lying still in snow, not iron-willed, like railroad tracks, willing not to meet until heaven, but here and there treading slubby kissing stops, our tracks wobble across the snow their long scratch.

So many things that happen here are really little more, if even that, than a scratch, too. Words, in our mouths, are almost ready, already, to bandage the one whom the scritch scritch scritch, meaning if how when we might lose each other, scratches scratches scratches from this moment to that. Then I will go back to that silent evening, when the past just managed to overlap the future, if only by a trace, and the light doubles and casts through the dark a sparkling that heavens the earth.

This ample new selection represents work chosen by Galway Kinnell from his eight previous collections, published between 1960 and 1994. In these personal, philosophical, and political poems, "Kinnell greets each new age with rapture and abundance, the earliest poems in this collection possessing heart, candor, and a wisdom beyond their years. As, certainly, America's preeminent visionary, Kinnell's new book sets him at the table with his mentors: Rilke, Whitman, and Frost" (National Book Award judges' citation).

Contents

Author's Note xi

FROM What a Kingdom It Was 1960

First Song 3

For William Carlos Williams 4

Freedom, New Hampshire 5

The Supper After the Last 9

The Avenue Bearing the Initial of Christ into the New World 12

FROM Flower Herding on Mount Monadnock 1964

The River That Is East 29

For Robert Frost 31

Poem of Night 35

Middle of the Way 37

Ruins Under the Stars 39

Flower Herding on Mount Monadnock 41

FROM Body Rags 1968

Another Night in the Ruins 47

Vapor Trail Reflected in the Frog Pond 49

The Burn 51

The Fly 52

The Correspondence School Instructor Says Goodbye

to His Poetry Students 53

How Many Nights 54

The Porcupine 55

The Bear 59

FROM The Book of Nightmares 1971

Under the Maud Moon 65

The Hen Flower 70

The Dead Shall Be Raised Incorruptible 74

Little Sleep's-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight 79

Lastness 83

FROM Mortal Acts, Mortal Words 1980

Fergus Falling 91

After Making Love We Hear Footsteps 93

Saint Francis and the Sow 94

Wait 95

Daybreak 96

Blackberry Eating 97

Kissing the Toad 98

On the Tennis Court at Night 99

The Last Hiding Places of Snow 101

Looking at Your Face 105

Fisherman 106

52 Oswald Street 107

A Milk Bottle 108

FROM The Past 1985

The Road Between Here and There 113

Conception 115

The Sow Piglet's Escapes 116

The Olive Wood Fire 117

The Frog Pond 118

Prayer 120

Fire in Luna Park 121

Cemetery Angels 122

On the Oregon Coast 123

First Day of the Future 124

The Fundamental Project of Technology 125

The Waking 127

That Silent Evening 130

FROM When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone 1990

The Tragedy of Bricks 133

The Cat 135

Oatmeal 137

The Perch 139

The Room 141

Last Gods 142

Farewell 144

When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone 146

FROM Imperfect Thirst 1994

My Mother's R and R 159

The Man in the Chair 160

The Cellist 162

Running on Silk 164

The Deconstruction of Emily Dickinson 166

Sheffield Ghazal 4: Driving West 168

Sheffield Ghazal 5: Passing the Cemetery 169

Parkinson's Disease 170

Rapture 172

Flies 174

Neverland 178