Public Service Announement: I am a sap. And these are beautiful.

[timepiececlock]

Mary Oliver

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.



William Blake

Love seeketh not Itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care;
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hells despair.

So sang a little Clod of Clay,
Trodden by the cattle’s feet;
But a Pebble of the brook;
Warbled out these metres meet:

Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to its delight;
Joys in another’s loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heavens despite.

---

I've posted both of these on my journal before. They are two of my favorites. I got "In Blackwater Woods" (poem 1) in my Intro to Poetry class at my community college, and every time I go back to look at it, it amazes me.

Comments

[octopedingenue]

To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.


I am...speechless and heartbroken and in awe.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

I know. The first time I read it I just skimmed it and dismissed it as a naturey poem. And then I read it again to analyze it and I actually *read* it and I was also speechless. Especially the last stanzas. They are so beautiful. And when you look at the first half, and you realize that the whole poem is about making love, and the beauty of that, and then you think about how the poem ends, and the beautiful sadness of *that*... it is breathtaking. If I wrote poetry, I'd like to write poetry like this.