Galway Kinnell

Galway Kinnell (1927-2014) was a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winning American poet. Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Kinnell received his BA from Princeton University, his MA from the University of Rochester, and was the recipient of a Fulbright scholarship. He has published numerous collections of poems and as well as a novel and his works address a variety of subjects from social commentary to nature to death. Kinnell was the poet laureate of Vermont from 1989-1993 and formerly served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Source

Trust the Hours (Wait)

Wait, for now.

Distrust everything if you have to.

But trust the hours. Haven’t they

carried you everywhere, up to now?

Personal events will become interesting again.

Hair will become interesting.

Pain will become interesting.

Buds that open out of season will become lovely again.

Second-hand gloves will become lovely again;

their memories are what give them

the need for other hands. The desolation

of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness

carved out of such tiny beings as we are

asks to be filled; the need

for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

Wait.

Don’t go too early.

You’re tired. But everyone’s tired.

But no one is tired enough.

Only wait a while and listen:

music of hair,

music of pain,

music of looms weaving all our loves again.

Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,

most of all to hear your whole existence,

rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.

Published:

1980

Length:

Regular

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Anthology Years:

2020

Themes:

Faith & Hope

Memory & The Past

Mental Health