Mary Oliver

[Diane]

Thanks for posting the correct thing - tut, I have become lax, dunno what happened.

mmmmmmmm green and blacks. I've got it like a habit and I'll never get enough.

I love all Marys summer poems -she really goes to the heart and soul of it

agree! Shall read again some of her summer ones. Cheers L. Enjoy the sun:-)

[lonndubh]

Starlings in Winter

Chunky and noisy,
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the telephone wire
and instantly

they are acrobats
in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theater of air,
they swing over buildings,

dipping and rising;
they float like one stippled star
that opens,
becomes for a moment fragmented,

then closes again;
and you watch
and you try
but you simply can’t imagine

how they do it
with no articulated instruction, no pause,
only the silent confirmation
that they are this notable thing,

this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin
over and over again,
full of gorgeous life.

Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;

I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard. I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbably beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.

[Diane]

Hello L! She has a way with words does she not, Ms Oliver. Here's another:


Cold Poem

Cold now.
Close to the edge. Almost
unbearable. Clouds
bunch up and boil down
from the north of the white bear.
This tree-splitting morning
I dream of his fat tracks,
the lifesaving suet.

I think of summer with its luminous fruit,
blossoms rounding to berries, leaves,
handfuls of grain.

Maybe what cold is, is the time
we measure the love we have always had, secretly,
for our own bones, the hard knife-edged love
for the warm river of the I, beyond all else; maybe

that is what it means the beauty
of the blue shark cruising toward the tumbling seals.

In the season of snow,
in the immeasurable cold,
we grow cruel but honest; we keep
ourselves alive,
if we can, taking one after another
the necessary bodies of others, the many
crushed red flowers.

[lonndubh]

On Winter’s Margin

On winter’s margin, see the small birds now
With half-forged memories come flocking home
To gardens famous for their charity.
The green globe’s broken; vines like tangled veins
Hang at the entrance to the silent wood.

With half a loaf, I am the prince of crumbs;
By snow’s down, the birds amassed will sing
Like children for their sire to walk abroad!
But what I love, is the gray stubborn hawk
Who floats alone beyond the frozen vines;

And what I dream of are the patient deer
Who stand on legs like reeds and drink that wind; -
They are what saves the world: who choose to grow
Thin to a starting point beyond this squalor.

by Mary Oliver

[lonndubh]

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

[lonndubh]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnKUKmcF ... re=related

[Judy]

Thank you so much! What a great video!

[Diane]

yes, that was most excellent, L, thanks! And that's Coleman Barks, the Rumi interpreter? I thought he'd be older, and smaller, with a white beard and glasses.

Out of pain,
and pain, and more pain
we feed this feverish plot,
we are nourished
by the mystery.

Show me the place
where the suffering began

[Diane]

...and the link led me to this Rumi poem, perfomed so beautifully by Mr Barks and musicians. This just about sums it up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sa07vKCwWPA

[mat james]

...this drunkenness started in some other tavern...

...the poetry and the vid's and associated links are nurturingly satisfying and vibrantly hot.
I am sweetly sauntering along with you;
Coleman Barks' readings are alluring and fresh; in his Rumi-ing/Rumi-nating!

Thanks Diane and Brid and who-ever.

Quote of the lot; "This drunkenness started in some other tavern" Ha! Ha! Rumi is my sort of man!
I look forward to getting drunk with Rumi once upon a time.
(Coleman's Rumi) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCyjO9wL ... re=related


MatbbgJ

[Diane]

They say that first impressions count for a lot, and when I watched L's video of Coleman Barks interviewing Mary Oliver, I fell in love with him, in under two minutes - from about 3 and a half mins in to just over 5 mins - for what he said, and especially that moment after he said, "what are you going to do about it. Deep. Blue. Night..." (the poem he quotes from is the first poem in this thread), when he just paused in that reflection. Most people who talk about poetry are intellectualising about it; making less rather than more of it (not that analysis doesn't have its place).

In that wonderful clip you posted, Mat, he talks with such conviction, like he knows something. What a fascinating man, in the same way that Leonard Cohen is.

Oh yeah I would love to get drunk with him.

Part two next...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyNUIbZTAZk

[lonndubh]

Its Summer again and I enjoy less busy days for walks and learn again how to idle



The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

[mat james]

I love it Brid!
Go Mary!!!

"Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?"

Two questions to live life by.
And I suppose I do ask those questions much of the time; and when I "act" on them, it is then that I know I am alive and on track.

"wild and precious" MatbellybuttongazerJ

[lonndubh]

"wild and precious" MatbellybuttongazerJ

Indeed Mat indeed -the ultimate prize !

[mat james]

"wild and precious god-particle"

go physics!

Check out Michio Kaku's short video on the topic.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/nation ... 6417165748

wildAndPreciousBbgazerMatJ-godParticle-esquey-sortOfGuy.