{"id":20896,"date":"2015-07-25T18:53:59","date_gmt":"2015-07-25T23:53:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/?p=20896"},"modified":"2015-07-25T18:53:59","modified_gmt":"2015-07-25T23:53:59","slug":"the-layers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/?p=20896","title":{"rendered":"The Layers"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Layers
\nBY STANLEY KUNITZ<\/p>\n

I have walked through many lives,
\nsome of them my own,
\nand I am not who I was,
\nthough some principle of being
\nabides, from which I struggle
\nnot to stray.
\nWhen I look behind,
\nas I am compelled to look
\nbefore I can gather strength
\nto proceed on my journey,
\nI see the milestones dwindling
\ntoward the horizon
\nand the slow fires trailing
\nfrom the abandoned camp-sites,
\nover which scavenger angels
\nwheel on heavy wings.
\nOh, I have made myself a tribe
\nout of my true affections,
\nand my tribe is scattered!
\nHow shall the heart be reconciled
\nto its feast of losses?
\nIn a rising wind
\nthe manic dust of my friends,
\nthose who fell along the way,
\nbitterly stings my face.
\nYet I turn, I turn,
\nexulting somewhat,
\nwith my will intact to go
\nwherever I need to go,
\nand every stone on the road
\nprecious to me.
\nIn my darkest night,
\nwhen the moon was covered
\nand I roamed through wreckage,
\na nimbus-clouded voice
\ndirected me:
\n\u201cLive in the layers,
\nnot on the litter.\u201d
\nThough I lack the art
\nto decipher it,
\nno doubt the next chapter
\nin my book of transformations
\nis already written.
\nI am not done with my changes.<\/p>\n

\"recordson\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Layers BY STANLEY KUNITZ I have walked through many lives, some of them my own, and I am not who I was, though some principle of being abides, from 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… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1kHSD-5r2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20896"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20898,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20896\/revisions\/20898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}