Five Poems, Five Days: Part III
When One Has Lived A Long Time Alone by Galway Kinnell 8 When one has lived a long time alone, one likes alike the pig, who brooks no deferment of gratification, and the porcupine, or thorned pig, who enters the cellar but not the house itself because of eating down the cellar stairs on the way up, and one likes the worm, who by bunching herself together and expanding works her way through the ground, no less than the butterfly, who totters full of worry among the day lilies, as they darken, and more and more one finds one likes any other species better than one's own, which has gone amok, making one self-estranged, when one has lived a long time alone. from When One Has Lived A Long Time Alone , published by Alfred A. Knopf (This whole cycle, printed at the back of the book, is one of my favorite poems ever, but I didn't feel like I could really get away with publishing all eleven parts here.)