Airs and Angels: This Night Only

By Kenneth Rexroth 1905–1982 Kenneth Rexroth

[Erik Satie: "Gymnopédie #1"]

Moonlight now on Malibu

The winter night the few stars

Far away millions of miles

The sea going on and on

Forever around the earth

Far and far as your lips are near

Filled with the same light as your eyes

Darling darling darling

The future is long gone by

And the past will never happen

We have only this

Our one forever

So small so infinite

So brief so vast

Immortal as our hands that touch

Deathless as the firelit wine we drink

Almighty as this single kiss

That has no beginning

That will never

Never

End

Kenneth Rexroth, "Air and Angels: This Night Only" from The Collected Shorter Poems. Copyright © 1964 by Kenneth Rexroth. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.

Source: The Collected Shorter Poems (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 2003)

Biography

Kenneth Rexroth was born in South Bend, Indiana and frequently moved around the Midwest during his childhood. He led a tumultuous life that included being orphaned at 14, constant traveling both in the US and abroad, intense political activism, and four marriages. Largely self-educated, he is one of the most well-read poets of the twentieth century. His poems, which influenced Beat writers such as Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence . . .

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