The Layers

How shall the heart be reconciled to it's 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
whereever 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.

by Stanley Kunitz