Special thanks to LanguageHat for bringing out this poem in a tribute to its author, Stanley Kunitz (1905 – 2006). While I do not believe in fate or mapped coincidence, there is an obvious relativity to this poem for me right now, today. But this happens to us all at any time, and I believe it is awareness or at times obsession, that has us catch those things of deeper personal meaning that might have gone unnoticed on another day.
THE THING THAT EATS THE HEART
The thing that eats the heart comes wild with years.
It died last night, or was it wounds before,
But somehow crawls around, inflamed with need,
Jingling its medals at the fang-scratched door.We were not unprepared: with lamp and book
We sought the wisdom of another age
Until we heard the action of the bolt.
A little wind investigates the page.No use pretending to the pitch of sleep;
By turnings we are known, our times and dates
Examined in the courts of either/or
While armless griefs mount lewd and headless doubts.It pounces in the dark, all pity-ripe,
An enemy as soft as tears or cancer,
In whose embrace we fall, as to a sickness
Whose toxins in our cells cry sin and danger.Hero of crossroads, how shall we defend
This creature-lump whose charity is art
When its own self turns Christian-cannibal?
The thing that eats the heart is mostly heart.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology