Poetry Tuesday - When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone

When One Has Lived A Long Time Alone

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When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone

by Galway Kinnell

When one has lived a long time alone,

one wants to live again among men and women,

to return to that place where one's ties with the human

broke, where the disquiet of death and now also 

of history glimmers its firelight on faces,

where the gaze of the new baby meets the gaze 

of the great granny, and where lovers speak,

on lips blows from kissing, that language

the same in each mouth, and like birds at daybreak

blether the song that is both earth's and heaven's 

until the sun rises, and they stand

in the daylight of being made one: kingdom come,

when one has lived a long time alone.