I’m enjoying my morning and evening walks with “Viernes”, our Guatemalan street dog with a well stamped passport. She is getting quite old but still game for walks up the steep mountains. Here she is enjoying her time “out and about”.
We walked through a kind of hidden valley and hit upon some beautiful patches of poppies. My favorite flower. I sat and thought about so many things, just happy, contented to be at peace and in nature’s embrace (however less wild it is here in S. Korea - so well maintained). Just in peace with the feeling of the wind on my face and the bees in view, hopping from flower to flower.
I don’t know if it was Friday, my dog or just being in nature or what’s been happening in my head these days … but I started thinking about the poetry of Mary Oliver, even surprisingly, quoting her in my head, her voice resonating in her particular prophetic tone.
As regular readers well know, I’m a big fan of the poetry of Mary Oliver. Natural, religious, from the soil up, she wrote about and praised the truest things of life.
Here, I offer yet another poem from her. I’ve been reading her since getting home and find so much solace in her words. The poem is one part of The Fourth Sign Of The Zodiac, Mary’s own words about her fight near the end, with her cancer (Cancer is the 4th sign of the zodiac).
It’s a timeless poem, a prayer like so many of Oliver’s poems. Elegiac in force, it is a call to LIVE and a song of PRAISE - central to most of her poems, so filled with gratitude for what she has and the time she’s got. I too, want to teach the world this message - even shove it down its throat, if I have to. Also see, in a similar vein and style, Oliver’s - Lines Written In The Days Of Growing Darkness.
She alludes to Keats, his life cut short at the age of 25, tuberculosis. You just never know when … so live in truth, enjoying your days - remember to “Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart.” Days and time are fleeting. Nobody (for long) will miss you when you are gone.
There is so much wisdom in the book of Ecclesiastes. If ever castaway on a deserted island with only one thing to read - Ecclesiastes would be it. It’s the sore thumb of the Bible, it sticks out like it doesn’t belong. It’s puzzled scholars but I get it. Essentially, the message is joyful - that despite the evil and suffering of this world, one needs to keep positive, engage with life and fight quietly for “the good”.
Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave whither you go.”
One of the first books to make an impression on me was Rabbi Kushner’s “When All You Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough.” It’s one long essay about the book of Ecclesiastes, one I highly recommend.
Here is Mary’s poem. You can listen to her read and find the full interview HERE. Find below, one of my own poems, along a similar vein.
III
I know, you never intended to be in this world.
But you’re in it all the same.
So why not get started immediately.
I mean, belonging to it.
There is so much to admire, to weep over.
And to write music or poems about.
Bless the feet that take you to and fro.
Bless the eyes and the listening ears.
Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste.
Bless touching.
You could live a hundred years, it’s happened.
Or not.
I am speaking from the fortunate platform
of many years,
none of which, I think, I ever wasted.
Do you need a prod?
Do you need a little darkness to get you going?
Let me be as urgent as a knife, then,
and remind you of Keats,
so single of purpose and thinking, for a while,
he had a lifetime.
“May I, emerging at last from this terrible insight
Burst into jubilant praise to assenting angels” – Rilke
It is strange
but
I am happy.
Millions are dying of hunger.
Children with chopped off limbs
walk towards candy stores
in their dreams.
Fast cars roar off to nowhere.
Burn patients sit softly on white sheets.
People are jumping off buildings.
Buildings are falling down.
A millionaire counts his pennies
pulled from a cookie jar.
The sun is burning and mice
are getting caught everyday
in better built mousetraps.
Lungs fill up with the waste of man’s ingenuity.
Whales cough blood in
the black of a cesspool sea.
Guns grow like geraniums
picked up and given in the name
of freedom rather than death.
My parents, your parents.
My son, your daughter.
The bright eyed boy across the street.
We are all going to die.
Funny.
I am happy.
Perhaps it is because
I am here.
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