Stanley Kunitz “Touch Me” – Lola's Curmudgeonly Musings

“Benches in the Courtyard of the Villa le Lagore (1963)

“Landschaft (Bei Cassis)” (1909, oil on canvas)

“Gladioli in a Japanese Vase” (1921)

“Bodenseelandschaft” (1929)

“Palm Harbor, Porto Dischia” (1921 oil on canvas)

“Das Hesse Zimmer in der Casa Camuzzi” (1950)

Two for Tuesday: Seasons of knowing

Spring

Let’s take a walk
In the city
Till our shoes get wet
(It’s been raining
All night) and when
We see the traffic
Lights and the moon
Let’s take a smile
Off the ashcan, let’s walk
Into town (I mean
A lemon peel)

Let’s make music
(I hear the cats
Purply beautiful
Like hallways in summer
Made of snowing rubber
Valence piccalilli and diamonds)
Oh see the arch ruby
Of this late March sky
Are you less intelligent
Than the pirate of lemons
Let’s take a walk

I know you tonight
As I have never known
A book of white stones
Or a bookcase of orange groans
Or symbolism
I think I’m in love
With those imaginary racetracks
Of traced grey in
The sky and the gimcracks
Of all you know and love
Who once loathed firecrackers
And license plates and
Diamonds but now you love them all
And just for my sake
Let’s take a walk
Into the river
(I can even do that
Tonight) where
If I kiss you please
Remember with your shoes off
You’re so beautiful like
A lifted umbrella orange
And white we may never
Discover the blue over-
Coat maybe never never O blind
With this (love) let’s walk
Into the first
Rivers of morning as you are seen
To be bathed in a light white light
Come on

~ Kenneth Koch

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.