West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems

by Mary Oliver

And to tell the truth I don’t want to let go of the wrists of idleness, I don’t want to sell my life for money, I don’t even want to come in out of the rain.

Have I not loved as though the beloved could vanish at any moment, or become preoccupied, or whisper a name other than mine in the stretched curvatures of lust, or over the dinner table?

Here in my head, language keeps making its tiny noises.

How can I hope to be friends with the yawning spaces between them where nothing, ever, is spoken?

I stood very still, and looked up, and tried to be empty of words. What joy was it, that almost found me? What amiable peace?

I believe in death. I believe it is the last wonderful work.

nobody can prove it but any fool can feel it

Poe, rambling in the gloom-bins of Baltimore and Richmond— light of the world, hold me.

If you think daylight is just daylight then it is just daylight.

Who made your tyrant’s body, your thirst, your delving, your gladness? Oh tiger, oh bone-breaker, oh tree on fire! Get away from me. Come closer.

And what did you think love would be like? A summer day? The brambles in their places, and the long stretches of mud? Flowers in every field, in every garden, with their soft beaks and their pastel shoulders? On one street after another, the litter ticks in the gutter. In one room after another, the lovers meet, quarrel, sicken, break apart, cry out. One or two leap from windows. Most simply lean, exhausted, their thin arms on the sill. They have done all that they could.

I pick up a pencil, I put it down, I pick it up again. I am thinking of you. I am always thinking of you.

And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away from wherever you are, to look for your soul?

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?