Beginning 2011: A Swan on New Water

If W.S. Merwin's singularly mindful and challenging verse served so well in bringing 2010 to a close, then Mary Oliver's touching signature verse serves well to begin 2011. These poems are from her new book, Swan. And yes, like the Merwin poems, I chose these because they speak to me and hold me, and refuse to let me move on until I understand why.

 

 

                How Many Days*

How many days I lived and had never used

the holy words,

Tenderly I began them when it came to me

to want to, oh mystery irrefutable!

Then I went out of that place

and into a field and lay down

among the weeds and the grasses,

whispering to them, fast, in order to keep

that world also.

It is Early*

It is early, still the darkest of the dark.

And already I have killed (in exasperation)

two mosquitoes and (inadvertently)

one spider.

All the same, the sun will rise

in its sweeps of pink and red clouds.

Not for me does it rise and not in haste does it rise

but step by step, neither

with exasperation nor inadvertently, and not with

any intended attention to

any one thing, but to all, like a god

that takes its instructions from another, even greater,

whose name, even, we do not know. The one

that made the mosquito, and the spider; the one

that made me as I am: easy to exasperate, then repent.

When*

When it's over, it's over, and we don't know

    any of us, what happens then.

So I try not to miss anything.

I think, in my whole life, I have never missed

    the full moon

or the slipper of its coming back.

Or a kiss,

Well, yes, especially a kiss.

Of Time*

Don't even ask how rapidly the hummingbird

    lives his life.

You can't imagine. A thousand flowers a day,

    a little sleep, then the same again, then

        he vanishes.

I adore him.

Yet I adore also the drowse of mountains.

And in the world, what is time?

In my mind there is Rumi, dancing.

There is Li Po drinking from the winter stream.

There is Hafiz strolling through Shariz, his feet

loving the dust.

What Can I Say*

What can I say that I have not said before?

So I'll say it again.

The leaf has a song in it.

Stone is the face of patience.

Inside the river there is an unfinishable story

    and you are somewhere in it

and it will never end until all ends.

Take your busy heart to the art museum and the

    chamber of commerce

but take it also to the forest.

The song you heard singing in the leaf when you

    were a child

is singing still.

I am of years lived, so far, seventy-four,

and the leaf is still singing.

*from Swan, poems and prose poems by Mary Oliver (2010)