Tag Archives: mary oliver

ANGUISH, BODY, MIND, SPIRIT, DESPAIR, EXISTENCE, FEELINGS

Where Does the Dance Begin, Where Does It End? Mary Oliver

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 Gakiibatha ni koi ni karithoitha

He who spends his time adorning himself knows he is going to a dance

There is a reason for everything

 

http://www.misterseed.com/link%20pages/PROVERBS2.htm

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Where Does the Dance Begin, Where Does It End?

by Mary Oliver

Don’t call this world adorable, or useful, that’s not it.
It’s frisky, and a theater for more than fair winds.
The eyelash of lightning is neither good nor evil.
The struck tree burns like a pillar of gold.

But the blue rain sinks, straight to the white
feet of the trees
whose mouths open.
Doesn’t the wind, turning in circles, invent the dance?
Haven’t the flowers moved, slowly, across Asia, then Europe,
until at last, now, they shine
in your own yard?

Don’t call this world an explanation, or even an education.

When the Sufi poet whirled, was he looking
outward, to the mountains so solidly there
in a white-capped ring, or was he looking

to the centre of everything: the seed, the egg, the idea
that was also there,
beautiful as a thumb
curved and touching the finger, tenderly,
little love-ring,

as he whirled,
oh jug of breath,
in the garden of dust?

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Eltham and Whittlesea Shires Advertiser and Diamond Creek Valley Advocate (Vic. : 1917 – 1922), Friday 5 October 1917,

1 1 1 1 Eltham and Whittlesea Shires Advertiser and Diamond Creek Valley Advocate (Vic. - 1917 - 1922), Friday 5 October 1917,

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Deep-red the bracken, its shape all gone,
The wild goose has raised his wonted cry.

 Irish Poem, Translated by Caitlin Matthews  

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Wild Geese

by Mary Oliver

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.

From:

Dream Work

Copyright ©:

Atlantic Monthly Press & Mary Oliver

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DEATH, INSANITY, LOST, MADNESS, MEMORIES, NEW BEGINNINGS, RECONSTRUCTION

Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun.”

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“And now my old dog is dead, and another I had after him, and my parents are dead, and that first world, that old house, is sold and lost, and the books I gathered there lost, or sold- but more books bought, and in another place, board by board and stone by stone, like a house, a true life built, and all because I was steadfast about one or two things: loving foxes, and poems, the blank piece of paper, and my own energy- and mostly the shimmering shoulders of the world that shrug carelessly over the fate of any individual that they may, the better, keep the Niles and Amazons flowing.”
― Mary Oliver, Blue Pastures