Touch Me | by: Stanley Kunitz

From: Barbara Milton

Feb 13, 2020, 11:16 AM To: Christina Pablo

I remember riding back on the subway from Brooklyn with Len after some sort of gathering with friends of his mother--maybe we were celebrating Jenny's birthday. But I was delighted to discover we loved the same poets--it was a wonderful way to spend time on the subway. Barbara 

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fromPassing Through: The Later Poems, New and Selected by Stanley Kunitz

(W. W. Norton, 1995)

Touch Me

by Stanley Kunitz

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.