309“bear blood” and “Blackberry Eating”
Zest of Galway Kinnell
know half of my life belongs to the wild
darkness,” says Galway Kinnell (b. 1927). Whatever those halves contain—
indoor and outdoor, body and spirit, conscious and unconscious—we see them
merging in “How Many Nights,” from 1965.
How many nights
have I lain in terror,
O Creator Spirit, Maker of night and day,
only to walk out
the next morning over the frozen world
hearing under the creaking of snow
faint, peaceful breaths...
snake,
bear, earthworm, ant...
and above me
a wild crow crying ‘yaw yaw yaw’
from a branch nothing cried from ever in my life.Echoing the Catholic hymn Veni Creator Spiritus, “Come, Creator Spirit,” this
also calls up Job facing God ’s rebuke: “Hast thou commanded the morning
since thy days?... Who provideth the raven his food?” Kinnell’s revelation
is “of the earth, earthy,” as the Bible says. And like the Psalms, “How Many
“
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