The Layers

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being abides,
f rom 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. ~Stanley Kunitz