The Journey
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice - - -
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
'Mend my life!'
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations - - -
though their melancholy
was terrible.It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do - - - determined to save
the only life you could save.
All summer I made friends
with the creatures nearby ---
they flowed through the fields
and under the tent walls,
or padded through the door,
grinning through their many teeth,
looking for seeds,
suet, sugar; muttering and humming,
opening the breadbox, happiest when
there was milk and music. But once
in the night I heard a sound
outside the door, the canvas
bulged slightly ---something
was pressing inward at eye level.
I watched, trembling, sure I had heard
the click of claws, the smack of lips
outside my gauzy house ---
I imagined the red eyes,
the broad tongue, the enormous lap.
Would it be friendly too?
Fear defeated me. And yet,
not in faith and not in madness
but with the courage I thought
my dream deserved,
I stepped outside. It was gone.
Then I whirled at the sound of some
shambling tonnage.
Did I see a black haunch slipping
back through the trees? Did I see
the moonlight shining on it?
Did I actually reach out my arms
toward it, toward paradise falling, like
the fading of the dearest, wildest hope ---
the dark heart of the story that is all
the reason for its telling?
I thought the earth remembered me
she took me back so tenderly
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I selpt as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.
The Swan
Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a
waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the
river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to
everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - - -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Where the path closed
down and over,
through the scumbled leaves,
fallen branches,
through the knotted catbrier,
I kept going. Finally
I could not
save my arms
from thorns; soon
the mosquitoes
smelled me, hot
and wounded, and came
wheeling and whining.
And that's how I came
to the edge of the pond:
black and empty
except for a spindle
of bleached reeds
at the far shore
which, as I looked,
wrinkled suddenly
into three egrets - - -
a shower
of white fire!
Even half-asleep they had
such faith in the world
that had made them - - -
tilting through the water,
unruffled, sure,
by the laws
of their faith not logic,
they opened their wings
softly and stepped
over every dark thing.
Moles
Under the leaves, under
the first loose
levels of earth
they're there - - - quick
as beetles, blind
as bats, shy
as hares but seen
less than these - - -
traveling
among the pale girders
of appleroot,
rockshelf, nests
of insects and black
pastures of bulbs
peppery and packed full
of the sweetest food:
spring flowers.
Field after field
you can see the traceries
of their long
lonely walks, then
the rains blur
even this frail hint of them - - -
so excitable,
so plush,
so willing to continue
generation after generation
accomplishing nothing
but their brief physical lives
as they live and die,
pushing and shoving
with their stubborn muzzles against
the whole earth,
finding it
delicious.
The Egret
Every time
but one
the little fish
and the green
and spotted frogs
know
the egretÕs bamboo legs
from the thin
and polished reeds
at the edge
of the silky world
of water.
Then,
in their last inch of time,
they see,
for an instant,
the white froth
of her shoulders,
and the white scrolls
of her belly,
and the white flame
of her head.
What more can you say
about such wild swimmers?
They were here,
they were silent,
they are gone, having tasted
sheer terror.
Therefore I have invented words
with which to stand back
on the weedy shoreÑ
with which to say:
Look! Look!
What is this dark death
that opens
like a white door?
Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful
than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon
and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is goneÑ
and how it slides again
out of the blackness
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower
streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distanceÑ
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild loveÑ
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure
that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you
as you stand there,
empty-handedÑ
or have you too
turned from this worldÑ
or have you too
gone crazy
for power
for things?
This morning
the
hawk
rose
up
out
of the meadowÕs browse
and swung over the lakeÑ
it
settled
on
the small black dome
of
a dead pine,
alert as an admiral,
its
profile
distinguished
with sideburns
the
color of smoke,
and I said: remember
this
is not something
of
the red fire, this is
heavenÕs
fistful
of death and destruction,
and
the hawk hooked
one
exquisite foot
onto
a last twig
to look deeper
into
the yellow reeds
along
the edges of the water
and
I said: remember
the tree, the cave
the
white lily of resurrection
and
thatÕs when it simply lifted
its
golden feet and floated
into the wind, belly-first,
and
then it cruised along the lakeÑ
all
the time its eyes fastened
harder
than love on some
unimportant rustling in the
yellow
reedsÑand then it
seemed
to crouch high in the air, and then it
turned
into a white blade, which fell.
The poppies send up their
orange flares; swaying
in the wind, their
congregations
are a levitation
of bright dust, of thin
and lacy leaves.
There isnÕt a place
in this world that doesnÕt
sooner or later drown
in the indigoes of darkness,
but now, for a while,
the roughage
shines like a miracle
as it floats above everything
with its yellow hair.
Of course nothing stops the cold,
black, curved blade
from hooking forwardÑ
of course
loss is the great lesson.
But also I say this: that light
is an invitation
to happiness
and that happiness
when itÕs done right,
is a kind of holiness,
palpable and redemptive.
Inside the bright fields,
touched by their rough and spongy gold
I am washed and washed
in the river
of earthly delightÑ
and what are you going to doÑ
what can you do
about itÑ
deep, blue night?
The Ponds
Every year
the lilies
are so perfect
I can hardly believe
their lapped light crowding
the black,
midsummer ponds.
Nobody could count all of themÑ
the muskrats swimming
among the pads and the grasses
can reach out
their muscular arms and touch
only so many, they are that
rife and wild.
But what in this world
is perfect?
I bend closer and see
how this one is clearly loopsidedÑ
and that one wears an orange blightÑ
and this one is a glossy cheek
half nibbled awayÑ
and that one is a slumped purse
full of its won
unstoppable decay.
Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzledÑ
to cast aside the weight of facts
and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking
into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothingÑ
that the light is everythingÑthat it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and falling. And I do.
Who made the world?
Who made the swan,
and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper I meanÑ
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and downÑ
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I donÕt know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else
should I have done?
DoesnÕt everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Like large dark
lazy
butterflies they sweep over
the glades looking
for death,
to eat it,
to make it vanish,
to make of it the miracle:
resurrection. No one
knows how many
they are who daily
minister so to the grassy
miles, no one
counts how many bodies
they discover
and descend to, demonstrating
each time the earthÕs
appetite, the unending
waterfalls of change.
No one
moreover,
wants to ponder it,
how it will be
to feel the blood cool,
shapeliness dissolve.
Locked into
the blaze of our own bodies
we watch them
wheeling and drifting, we
honor them and we
loathe them,
however wise the
doctrine,
however magnificent
the cycles,
however ultimately
sweet
the huddle of death to fuel
those powerful wings.
from
http://www.csmonitor.com/atcsmonitor/specials/poetry/p-oliver.html
My school was the great poets: I read, and I read, and I read. I
imitated - shamelessly, fearlessly. I was endlessly discontent. I looked at
words and couldn't believe the largess of their sound - the whole sound
structure of stops and sibilants, and things which I speak about now with
students! All such mechanics have always fascinated me. Still do!
I take walks. Walks work for me. I enter some arena that is
neither conscious or unconscious. It's a joke here in town: I take a walk and
I'm found standing still somewhere. This is not a walk to arrive; this is a
walk that's part of a process.
I keep a notebook with me all the time - and I scribble.... You
begin to get your felt reaction in a phrase, perhaps. But, you know, I've said
before that the angel doesn't sit on your shoulder unless the pencil's in your
hand. ... And in truth that [is only] given after years of desiring it, being
open to it, and walking toward it.
I believe art is utterly important. It is one of the things that
could save us. We don't have to rely totally on experience if we can do things
in our imagination. ... It's the only way in which you can live more lives than
your own. You can escape your own time, your own sensibility, your own
narrowness of vision.
I see something and look at it and look at it. I see myself going closer
and closer just to see it better, as though to see its meaning out of its
physical form. And then, I take something emblematic from it and then it
transcends the actual.
I grew up in a small town in Ohio.... It was pastoral, it was
nice, it was an extended family. I don't know why I felt such affinity with the
natural world except that it was available to me, that's the first thing. It
was right there. And for whatever reasons, I felt those first important
connections, those first experiences being made with the natural world rather
than with the social world. I think the first way you do it, the first way you
take meaning from the physicality of the world, from your environment, probably
never leaves you. I think it sets a pattern, in a way.
The speaker is saying, where is the girl of 30 years ago. Where is
the girl that I was? What has time done?
It's a poem that tries to break down time, in a way. I almost
never give the speaker of the poem a gender, so that the poem will fit as an
experience to either a male or female reader. Many poets, especially women
poets right now, are trying to write poems about their personal lives ... to
share, as they say, with the reader. And I'm trying to write a poem which was
not the experience of the reader but might have been. I use present tense a lot
for the same reason. Every way that I can, I try to make it a felt experience.
And so to use one gender or the other would make all readers of the other
gender a little hesitant. But in this particular poem when I say
"beautiful girl" it gives it away. But that is really all I meant.
All young girls are beautiful.
And especially when you're an old girl, (laughs), then you
remember that you were a beautiful girl once.