The Man Splitting Wood in the Daybreak

By Galway Kinnell b. 1927 Galway Kinnell

The man splitting wood in the daybreak

looks strong, as though, if one weakened,

one could turn to him and he would help.

Gus Newland was strong. When he split wood

he struck hard, flashing the bright steel

through the air so hard the hard maple

leapt apart, as it’s feared marriages will do

in countries reluctant to permit divorce,

and even willow, which, though stacked

to dry a full year, on being split

actually weeps—totem wood, therefore,

to the married-until-death—sunders

with many little lip-wetting gasp-noises.

But Gus is dead. We could turn to our fathers,

but they help us only by the unperplexed

looking-back of the numerals cut into headstones.

Or to our mothers, whose love, so devastated,

can’t, even in spring, break through the hard earth.

Our spouses weaken at the same rate we do.

We have to hold our children up to lean on them.

Everyone who could help goes or hasn’t arrived.

What about the man splitting wood in the daybreak,

who looked strong? That was years ago. That was me.

Galway Kinnell, “The Man Splitting Wood in the Daybreak” from Three Books. Copyright © 2002 by Galway Kinnell. Reprinted with the permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved, www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com.

Source: Three Books (2002)

Biography

Galway Kinnell is an award-winning poet best known for poetry that connects the experiences of daily life to much larger poetic, spiritual, and cultural forces. Often focusing on the claims of nature and society on the individual, Kinnell’s poems explore psychological states in precise and sonorous free verse. The New York Times Book Review essayist Morris Dickstein called Kinnell "one of the true master poets of his . . .

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