POETRY

HOUSE OF LIGHT
MARYOLIVER
Winner of a 1991 Christopher Award
Winner of the 1991 Boston Globe Lawrence L. Winship Book Award

This collection of poems by Mary Oliver once again invites the reader to step across
the threshold of ordinary life into a world of natural and spiritual luminosity. Again the word-
pleasirres of her work create an illuminated passage toward the difficult subjects which are
)f L
what poetry is about-love and death, the merciless naturallaws of this world, the quest
for grace.

FJ:?m the reviews of House of Iight:

"Oliver's poems are thoroughly convincing-as genuine, moving, and implausible as the first
caressing breeze of spring:' -New York Times Book Review

"Mary Oliver's poetry both celebrates the natural world and puts before us disturbing images of
that worl¡;l 1.jn which we see reflections of ourselves. Her poetry leads us to question what it is
that makes ~ human, what being 'civilized' has given us-and whát it has cost:'
- Bloomsbury Review

"[Oliver's] plain style and her persistent, nearly unvoiceable awe at the powerful beauty of
n~t~ are well-matched partners:' -Kenyon Review

"Pla.cing the self in the stream of natural change, these quiet but forceful poems evoke the fears,
soriDws, and joys of the solitary spirit. At their most exuberant, they celebrate the spirit's light,
whether it manifests itself in fish bones, lilies, snow, or a luminous vision of death-that
' .
'scalding, aortallight; wherein we are 'washed and washed 1out of our bones:" -Poetry

Mary Oliver's books of poems include New and Selected Poems, winner of the 1992
National Book Award for Poet!y, 'and American Primitive, winner of the 1984 Pulitzer
Prize for Poetry. She lives in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
POEMS BY
Cover painting: Arthur Cohen, Provincetown Harbar, 1975
Cover design: Dede Cummings
US $16.00 1 $18.00 CAN
ARYOLIVER
,.r
ISBN 978-0-8070-·68 11-3

BEACON PRESS 8113 NI R OF THE 1984 PULITZER PRIZE FOR POETRY

Boston
HousE oF LIGHT
 ÜTHER BooKs BY MARY OuvER
HOUSE OF
Dream Work
American Primitive
Twelve Moons
LIGHT
The River Styx, Ohio and Other Poems
No Voyage and Other Poems

CHAPBOOKS
MARY OLIVER
, 'Sleeping in the Forest
The Night Traveler

BEACON PRESS BosToN

 Beacon Press
25 Beacon Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02108-2892 For
www.beacon.org
Molly Malone Cook
Beacon Press books
are published under the auspices of
the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.

© 1990 by Mary Oliver

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

16 15 14 26 25 24 23

Text design by Dede Cummings

M y thanks to the editors of the following magazines, in

which sorne of these poems
previously appeared:
Amicus (Spring, The Pipefish, The Swan, Five A.M. in the
Pinewoods); Antaeu s (Nature);
The Atlantic (Lilies, Writing Poems, Moccasin Flowers,
The Loon on Oak-Head Pond);
Country Journal (The Deer, The Gift; Wings, The Notebo
ok, Herons in Winter in the Frozen
J\l[arsh, How Turtles Comet o Spend the Winter in the Aquariu
m ... , Pinches, Turtle);
H~f~ard Magazine (Sorne Questions Yo u Might As k); Kenyon
Revi;w (Fish Eones,
Indonesia, The Terns); Ohio Review (Crows); Partisan Review
(Everything); Ploughshares
- --·(Maybe, Little Owl Who Lives in the Orchard); Poetry
(The Hermit Crab, The Kingfisher,
Singapore, Death at a Gre~t Distance, Snake, What Is It?);
Sycamore Review (The '
Kookaburras); Virginia Quarterly Review (The Buddha 's
Last Instruction, The Lilies Break
Open Over the Dark Water); Western Humanities Review
(Praise, "Ich bin der Welt abhanden
gekorrimen"); Wigwag (The Summer Day, Sorne Herons)
; Wilderness (The Ponds). White
Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field originally appeared in
The New Yorker.
This book is printed on acid-free paper that meets the uncoate
d paper ANSI/NISO
specifications for permanence as revised in 1992.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Oliver, Mary
House of light 1 Mary Olivel-.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-8070-681 1-3 (pbk.)
I. Title.
PS3565.L5H68. 1990
X11'.54- dc20 89-46059
 CoNTENTS

SoME QuEsTioNs You MIGHT AsK ' 1

MoccASIN FLoWERS 2
THE BuooHA's LAST INsTRUCTION 4
SPRING 6
SINGAPORE 8
THE HERMIT CRAB 10
LILIES 12
WINGS 14
THE SwAN 16
THE KINGFISHER 18
INDONESIA 19
"lcH BIN DER WELT ABHANDEN GEKOMMEN" 20
TURTLE 22
THE DEER 24
THE LooN ON ÜAK-HEAD PoND 25
WHAT Is h? 26
WRITING PoEMS 29
SoME HERONS 30
FIVE A.M. ÍN THE PINEWOODS 32
LITTLE ÜWL WHO LIVES IN THE ÜRCHARD 34
THE ÜIFT 36
PIPEFISH 37
THE KooKABURRAS 39
THE LILIES BREAK ÜPEN ÜVER THE DARK WATER 40

vii
 DEATH AT A GREAT DrsT ANCE
42
THE NoTEB OOK
44
PRAISE
46
LOOKIN G FOR SNAKE S
48
FrsH BoNES
50
THE ÜAK TREE AT THE ENTRA NCE TO
BLACK WATER PoNo
52
EVERY THING
54
NATU RE
55
SNAKE
57
THE PoNos
58
THE SUMME R DAY
60 Hou sE oF LIGH T
SEREN GETI
61
THE TERNS
64
RosEs, LATE SuMME R
66
HERON S IN WINTE R IN THE FROZE N MARSH
68
LooKI NG AT A BooK OF VAN GocH' s PAINTI
N,Gs,
-~ ,~IN LEWISB URG, PENNS YLVAN IA
70
· ··· FoxEs IN WrNTE &
72
How TuRTL Es CoME TO SPENO THE WrNTE R
IN THE
AQuAR IUM, THEN ARE FLowN SouTH ANO
. RELEAS EO BACK lNTO THE SEA
73
CROWS
75
MAYBE
76
FIN CHES
78
WHrTE ÜwL FuEs lNTo ANO OuT OF THE FrELo
79

viii
 SoME QuESTIONs You MrcHT AsK

Is the soul solid, like iron?

Or is it tender and breakable, like
the wings of a moth in the beak of the owl?
Who has it, and who doesn't? '
I keep looking around me.
The fa ce of the moose is as 'Sad
as the face of Jesus.
The swan opens her white wings slowly.
In the fall, the black bear carries leaves into the darkness.
One question leads to another.
Does it have a shape? Like an iceberg?
Like the eye of a hummingbird?
Does it have one lung, like the snake and the scallop?
Why should I have it, and not the anteater
who loves her children?
Why should I have it, and not the camel?
Come to l:hink of it; what about the maple trees?
What about the blue iris?
What about all the little stones, sitting alone in the moonlight?
What about roses, and lemons, and their shining leaves?
What about the grass?

1
 But all my life- so far-
I have loved best
how the flowers rise
and open, how
MoccASIN FLOWERs
the pink lungs of their bodies .
All my life, enter the fire of the ~orld
so far, and stand there shining
I have loved and willing-the one
more than one thing,
thing they can do before
including the mossy hooves they shuffle forward .
of dreams, including into the floor of darkness, they
the spongy litter become the trees.
under the tall trees.

In spring
the moccasin flowers
reach for the crackling
lick of the sun

and burn clown. Sometimes,

J in the shadows,
I sée the hazy eyes,
the lamb-lips

of oblivion,
its deep drowse,
' .
and I can imagine a new nothing
in the universe,

the inatted leaves splitting

open, revealing
the black planks
of the stairs.

2 3
 yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.
Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
THE BuDDHA's LAsT INSTRUCTION He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.

"Make of yourself a light,"

said the Buddha,
befare he died.
I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness, to send up the first
signal-a white fan
streaked with pink and violet,
even green.
An old man, he lay clown
between two sala trees,
and he might have said anything,
knowing it was his final hour.
The light burns upward,
it thic)sens and settles over the fields.
Arou:nd him, the villagers gathered
and stretched forward to listen.
Even befare the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves.
No doubt he thought of everything
that had happened in his difficult life.
And then I feel the sun itself
as it bla;es-over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire-
clearly l'm not needed,

4 5
 my life is
with its poems
ancl its music
ancl its glass cities,
SPRING
it is also this clazzling clarkness
coming
Somewhere 1
clown the mountain, '
a black bear
breathing ancl tasting;
has just risen from sleep
ancl is staring
all day I think of her-
her white teeth,
clown the mountain.
her worcllessness,
All night
her perfect love.
in the brisk ancl shallow restlessness
of early spring

I think of her,
her four black fists
flicking the gravel,
her tongue

Uke a red fire

touching the grass,
the colcl water.
There is only one question:

how to love this world.

I think of her
rising
like a black ancl leafy leclge

to-shatpen her claws against

the silence
of the trees.
Whatever else

6 7
 1 don't doubt for a moment that she loves her life.
And 1 want her to rise up from the crust and the slop
and fly clown to the river.
This probably won't h appen.
But maybe it will.
SINGAPORE
1f the world were only pain andlogic, who would want it?
In Singapore, in the airport,
a darkness was ripped from my eyes. Of course, it isn't.
Neither do 1 mean anything miraculous, but only
In the women's restroom, one compartment stood open.
A woman knelt there, washing something the light that can shine out of a life. I rriean
the way she unfolded and refolded.the blue cloth,
in the white bowl.
the way her smile was only for my sake; I mean
Disgust argued in my stomach the way this poem is filled with trees, and birds.
and I felt, in my pocket, for my ticket.

A poem should always have birds in it.

Kingfishers, say, with their bold eyes and gaudy wings.
Rivers are pleasant, and of course trees.
A waterfall, or if that's not possible, a fountain
rising and falling.
A person wants i:o stand in a happy place, in a poem.

When tfie woman turned I could not answer her face.

Her beauty and her embarrassment struggled together, and
neither could win.
She smiled and I smiled. What kind of nonsense is this?
Everybody needs a job.

Yes, a person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem.

But first we must watch her as she stares clown at her labor,
which is dull enough .
She is washi~g the tops of the airport ashtrays, as big as
hubcaps, with ·a blue rag.
Her small hands turn the metal, scrubbing and rinsing.
She does not work slowly, nor quickly, but like a river.
Her dark hair is like the wing of a bird.

8 9
 with more ornaments of death-
what a pearly rubble
·from which to choose a house
like a white flower-
THE HERMIT CRAB
and what a rebellion
Once 1 looked inside to leap into it
the darkness and hold on,
of a shell folded like a pastry, connecting everything,
and there was a fancy face-
the past to the future-
or almost a face- which is of course the mirade-
it turned away which is the only argument there is
and frisked up its brawny forearms against the sea.
so quickly

against the light

and my looking in
1 scarcely had time to see it,
· gleaming

under the pure white roof

of old calcium.
When 1 set it clown, it hurried
along the tideline

of the sea,
which was slashing along as usual,
shouting and hissing
toward the future,

turhing its back

with every tide on the past,
leaving the shore littered
every morning

10 11
 most of all himself.
He wasn't a lily,
and wandering through the bright fields
only gave him more ideas
LruEs
it would take his life to salve.
1 have been thinking 1 think 1 will always be lonely,
about living in this world, where the cattle ·
like the lilies graze like a black and white river-
that blow in the fields.
where the ravishing lilies
They rise and fall melt, without protest, on their tongues-
in the wedge of the wind, where the hummingbird, whenever there is a fuss,
and have no shelter just rises and floats away.
from the tongues of the cattle,

and have no closets or cupboards,

and have no legs.
Still 1 would like to be
. as wonderful

as that old idea.

But"ifl were a lily
1 think 1 would wait all day
for the green face

of the hummingbird
to touch me.
What 1 mean is,
could 1 forget myself

even in lhose feathery fields?

When van Gogh
preached to the poor
of course he wanted to save someone-

12 13
 No! said my heart, and drew back.
But my bones knew something wonderful
about the darkness-
and they thrashed in their cords,
WrNcs
they fought, they wanted
I saw the heron to lie clown in that silk)( mash
poi se of the swamp, the sooner
like a branch of white petals to fly.
in the swamp,

in the mud that líes

like a glaze,
in the water
that swirls its pale panels

of reflected clouds;
I saw the heron shaking
its clamp wings-
and then I felt

an explosion-
,, apain-
also a happiness
I can hardly mention

as I slid free-
as I saw the world
through those yellow eyes-
as I stood like that, rippling,
.
uride't the mottled sky
of the evening
that was beginning to throw
its dense shadows.

14 15
 I miss my husband's company-
he is so often
in paradise.
Of course! the path to heaven
THE SWAN
doesn't líe clown in flat miles.
Across the wide waters It's in the imagination ,
with which you perceive ·.
something comes
floating-a slim this world,
and delicate
and the gestures
ship, filled with which you honor it.
Oh, what will I do, what will I say, when those
with white flowers-
and it moves white wings
touch the shore?
on its miraculous muscles

as though time didn't exist,

as though bringing such gifts
to the dry shore
was a happiness

alm9st beyond bearing.

And now it turns its dark eyes,
it rearranges
the clouds of its wings,

it trails
an elaborate webbed foot,
the color of charcoal.
Soon it will be here.

Oh, ~hai: shall I do

when that poppy-colored beak
rests in my hand?
Said Mrs. Blake of the poet:

16 17
 THE KINGFISHER INDONESIA

The kingfisher rises out of the black wave On the curving, dusty roads
like a blue flower, in his beak we drove through the plantations
he carries a silver leaf. 1 think this is where the pickers balanced on the hot hillsides-
the prettiest world-so long as you don't mind then we climbed toward the green trees,
a little dying, how could there be a day in your wholé-life toward the white scarves of the- clouds,
that doesn't have its splash of happiness? to the inn that is never closed
There are more fish than there are leaves in this island of fairest weather.
on a thousand trees, and anyway the kingfisher The sun hung like a stone,
wasn't born to think about it, or anything else. time dripped away like a steaming river
When the wave snaps shut over his blue head, the water and from somewhere a dry tongue lashed out
remains water-hunger is the only story · its single motto: now and forever.
he has ever heard in his life that he could believe. And the pickers balanced on the hot hillsides
I don't say he's right. Neither like gray and blue blossoms,
do I say he's wrong. Religiously he swallows the silver leaf wrapped in their heavy layers of clothes
with its broken red river, and with a róugh and easy cry against the whips of the branches
1 couldr~'t rouse out of my thoughtful body in that world of leaves no poor man,
if my life depended on it, he swings back with ·a brown face and an empty sack,
over the bright sea to do the same thing, to do it has everpicked his way out of.
(as I long to do something, anything) perfectly. At the im1 we stepped from the car
to the garden, where tea
was brought to us scalding in white cups from the fire.
Don't ask if it was the fire of honey , ·
or the fire of death, don't ask
if we ·were determined to live, at last,
with merciful hearts. We sat
among the unforgettable flowers.
We let the white cups cool before
we raised them to our lips.

18 19
 forever and forever-
the leaves,
the birds, the ponds,
the loneliness,
"lcH BIN DER WELT ABHANDEN GEKOMMEN"
and, sometimes,
from a lifetime ago
Today is
and another country
Gustav Mahler's
such a willing and lilting companion-
birthday, and
as usual 1 went out
asong
made so obviously for me.
early into the sea,green
At what unknowable cost.
morning where the birds
And by a stranger.
were singing,
all over but mostly

at the scalloped edges

ofthe ponds
and in the branches of the trees,
whi~h flared out and clown,

like. the clothes of our spirits

patiently waiting.
For hours 1 wandered
over the fields

and the only thing that kept me company

was a song,
it glided along
with my delicious dark happiness,

my heavy;
brisding :md aching delight
at the world
which has been like this

20 21
 a dusty, fouled turtle plodding along-
a snapper-
broken out 1 suppose from some backyard cage-
and 1 knew what 1had to do-
TURTLE
1 looked it right in the eyes, and 1.c aught it-
l put it, like a small m9untain ra_nge,
Now 1 see it-
into a knapsack, and hook it out
it nudges with its bulldog head
of the city, and 1 let it
the slippery stems of the lilies, making them tremble;
and now it noses along in the wake of the little brown teal
clown into the da~kpond, into
the cool water,
who is leading her soft children
and the light of the lilies,
from one side of the pond to the other; she keeps
to live.
clase to the edge
and they follow closely, the good children-

the tender children,

the sweet children, dangling their pretty feet
into the darkness.
And now will come-1 can count on it-the murky splash,

. the certain victory

of that pink and gassy mouth, and the frantic •
circling of the hen while the rest of the chicks
fiare away over the water and into the reeds, and my heart

will be most mournful

on their account. But, listen,
what's important?
Nothing's important

except thaí: the great and cruel mystery of the world,

of which this is a part,
not be denied. Once,
1 happened to see, on a city street, in summer,

22 23
 THE DEER THE LooN oN ÜAK-HEAD PoND

You never know. críes for three days, in the gray mist.
The body of night opens críes for the north it hopes it c in find.
like a river, it drifts upward like white smoke,
plunges, and comes up with a slappi'ng pickerel.
like so many wrappings of mist. blinks its red eye.
And on the hillside two deer are walking along
just as though this wasn't críes again.

the owned, tilled earth of today you come every afternoon, and wait to hear it.
but the past. you sit a long time, quiet, under the thick pines,
I did not see them the next day, or the next, in the silence that follows.

but in my mind's eye- as though it were your own twilight .

.there they a·re, in the long grass, as though it were your own vanishing song.
like two sisters.

This is the earnest work. Each of us is given

only so many mornings todo it-
to look around and love

the oily fur of our lives,

the hoof and the grass-stained muzzle.
Days I don't do this

.
I feel ·the terror of idleness,
like a red thirst.
Death isn't just an idea.

When we die the body breaks open

like a river;
the old body goes on, dimbing the hill.

24 25
 Who could stop them?
Who could tell them
to go cautiously, to flow slowly
under the lily pads?
WHAT Is lT?
Offthey go,
Who can say, hundreds of them,
is it a snowy egret like the black
or a white flower fingerprints of the rain.
standing
The frogs freeze
at the glossy edge into perfect five-fingered
of the lily- shadows, but suddenly the flower
and frog-filled pond? has fire-colored eyes
Hours ago the orange sun
and one of the shadows vanishes.
opened the cups of the lilies Clearly, now, the flower is a bird.
and the leopard frogs . lt lifts its head,
began kicking it lifts the hinges
their long muscles,
of its snowy wings,
breast-stroking tossing a moment of light
J like little green dwarves in every direction,
under the roof of the rich, .like a chandelier,
iron-colored water.
artd then once more is still.
Now the soft The salamanders,
eggs of the salamander like tiny birds, locked into formation,
in their wrappings of jelly fly clown into the endless mysteries
begin to shiver.
.
They're tired of sleep.
of the transforming water,
and how could anyone believe
They have a new idea. that anything in this world
They waht to swim away is only what it appears to be-
into the world.

'1

26 27
that anything is ever final-
that anything, in spite of its absence,
ever dies
a perfect death?
WRITING PoEMs

This morning 1 watched

the pale green eones of the ~hododendrons
opening their small pink and red blouses-
,

the bodies of the flowers

were instantly beautiful to the bees, they hurried
out of that dark place in the thick tree

one after another, an invisible line

upon which their iridescence caught fire
as the sun caught them, sliding clown.

ls there anything more important

than hunger and happiness? Each bee entered
the frills of a flower to find

·the sticky fountain, and if sorne dust

spilled on the walkways of the petals
and caught onto their bodies, 1 don't know

if the bees know that otherwise death

is everywhere, even in the red swamp
of a flower. But they did this

with no small amount of desperation-you might say: lave.

And the flowers, as daft as mud, poured out their honey.

28 29
 when the poet is awakened
from the forest of meditation.
lt was summer.

SoME HERONs
lt was only a few moments past the sun's rising,
which meant that the whole long sweet day
A blue preacher lay before them.
flew toward the swamp,
in slow motion. They greeted each other,
rumpling their gowns for an instant,
On the leafy banks, and then smoothing them.
an old Chinese poet,
hunched in the white gown of his wings, They entered the water,
and instantly two more herons-
was waiting. equaUy as beautiful-
The water
was the kind of dark silk joined them and stood just beneath them
in the black, polished water
that has silver lines where they fished, aU day.
. shot through it
when it is touched by the wind

or 'f; splashed upward,

in a small, quick flower,
by the life beneath it.

The preacher
made his difficult landing,
his skirts up around his knees.

The;poet's eyes
flared, just as a poet's eyes
are said to do

30 31
 would have come to my arms.
But the other
stamped sharp hoof in the
pine needles like
FrvE A.M. IN THE PrNEWOODS
the tap of sanity,
and they went off together through
I'd seen
the trees. When I woke
their hoofprints in the deep
I was alone,
needles and knew
they ended the long night
I was thinking: .
so this is how you swim inward,
under the pines, walking
so this is how you flow outward,
like two mute
so this is how you pray.
and beautiful women toward
the deeper woods, so I

got up in the dark and

went there. They carne
slowly clown the hill
and looked at me sitting under

tb.e blue trees, shyly

they stepped
closer and stared
from under their thick lashes and even

nibbled sorne clamp

tassels of weeds. This
is not a poem about a dream,
though it could be.

This 'is a poem about the world

that is ours, or could be.
Finally
one of them-I swear it!-

32 33
 Somewhere in the universe,
in the gallery of important things,
the babyish owl, ruffled and rakish,
sits on its pedestal.
LITTLE Owt WHo LivEs IN THE ÜRCHARD
Dear, dark dapple of plush!
A message, reads the label,
His beak could open a bottle, from that mysterious copglomerate:
and his eyes-when he lifts their soft lids- Oblivion and Ca.
go on reading something The hooked head stares
just beyond your shoulder- from its blouse of dark, feathery lace.
Blake, maybe, lt could be a valentine.
or the Book of Revelation.

Never mind that he eats only

the black-smocked crickets,
and dragonflies if they happen
to be out late over the ponds, and of course
the occasional festal mouse.
Never mind that he is only a memo
from the offices of fear-

. it's not size but surge that tells us

when we're in touch with something real,
and when I hear him in the orchard
fluttering
down the little aluminum
ladder of his scream-
when l see his wings open, like two black ferns,

a flurry of palpitations
as cold as sleet
rátkets across the marshlands
of my heart,
like a wild spring day.

34 35
 THE GIFT PIPEFISH

I wanted to thank the mockingbird for the vigor of his song. In the green
Every day he sang fróm the rim of the field, while I picked and purple weeds
blueberries or just idled in the sun. called Zostera, loosely
Every day he carne fluttering by to show me, and why not, swinging in the shallo~s,
the white blossoms in his wings.
So one day I went there with a machine, and played sorne songs of I waded, I reached
Mahler. my hands
The mockingbird stopped singing, he carne clase and seemed in that most human
to listen. of gestures-to find,
Now when I go clown to the field, a little Mahler spills
through the sputters of his song. to see,
How happy I am, lounging in the light, listening as the music to hold whatever it is
floats by! that's there-
And I give thanks al~o for my mind, that thought of giving and what carne up
a gift.
And mostly I'm grateful that I take this world so seriously. wasn't much
' but it glittered
and struggled,
it had eyes, and a body

like a wand,
it had pouting lips.
No longer,
all of it,

than any of my fingers,

it wanted
away from my strangeness,
it wanted

36 37
 to go back
into that waving forest
so quick and wet.
1 forget
THE KooKABURRAS
when this happened,
how many years ago In every heart there is a coward and a procrastinator.
1 opened my hands- In every heart there is a god of flowers, 'just waiting
like a promise to come out of its cloud and lift its wing~.
The kookaburras, kingfishers, pressed again'st the edge of
1 would keep my whole life, their cage, they asked me to open the door.
and have- Years later 1 wake in the night and remember how 1 said to them,
and let it go. no, and walked away.
1 tell you this They had the brown eyes of soft-hearted dogs.
They didn't want to do anything so extraordinary, only to fly
in case you have yet to wade home to their river.
into the green By now 1 suppose the great darkness has covered them.
and purple shallows As for myself; 1 am not yet a god of even the palest flowers.
where the diminutive Nothing else has changed either.
Someone tosses their white bones to the dung-heap.
pipefish The sun shines on the latch of their cage.
wants to go on living. 1 lie in the dark, my heart pounding.
.,, 1 tell yo u this
against everything you are-

your human heart,

your h ands passing over the world,
gathering and closing,
so dry and slow.

39
38
 are slippery and wild-they are
devoid of meaning, they are
simply doing,
from the deepest
THE LILIES BREAK ÜPEN ÜVER THE DARK WATER
spurs of their being, .
what they are impelled to do
lnside \
every summer.
that mud-hive, that gas-sponge,
And so, dear sorrow, are you.
that reeking
leaf-yard, that rippling

dream-bowl, the leeches'

flecked and swirling
broth of life, as rich
as Babylon,

the fists crack

open and the wands
of the lilies
quicken, they rise

like pale poles

with their wrapped beaks of lace;
one day
they tear the surface,

the next they break open

over the dark water.
And there you are
on the shore,

fltfol and thoughtful, trying

to attach them to an idea-
sanie news of your own life.
But the lilies

40 41
 of the story, but stood in my lonely body
amazed and full of attention as it fell
like a stream of glowing syrup into
the dark water, as death
blurted out of that perfectly arranged mouth.
DEATH AT A GREAT DrsTANCE

The ripe, floating caps

of the fly amanita
glow in the pinewoods.
I don't even think
of the eventual corruption of my body,

but of how quaint and humorous they are,

like a collection of doorknobs,
half-moons,
then a yellow drizzle of flying saucers.
In any case

they won't hurt me unless

·., ,.. ,,.':".
I take them between my lips
and swallow, which I know enough
not to do. Once, in the south,
· · I had this happen:

the soft rape of a watermoccasin

slid clown the red knees
of a mangrove, the hundreds of ribs
housed in their smooth, white
sleeves of muscle moving it

like a happiness
toward i:he·water, where sorne bubbles
on the surface of that underworld announced
a fatal carelessness. I didn't
even then move toward the fine point

42 43
 are a faint flamingo inside
their white hearts,
and there is still time
to let the last roses of the sunrise
float clown
THE NoTEBOOK
into my uplifted eyes."
"Six a.m.-
the small, pond turtle
lifts its head
into the air
like a green toe.
lt looks around.
What it sees
is the whole world
swirling back from darkness:
a red sun
rising over the water,
over the pines,
and the wind lifting,
· and the water-striders heading out,
and the white lilies
ope!ling their happy bodies.
Tne turtle
doesn't have a word for any of it-
the silky water
or the enormous blue morning,
or the curious affair of his own body.
On the shore
l'm so busy
scribbling and crossing out
I alniost miss seeing him
paddie away
through the wet, black forest.
More and more the moments come to me:
how much can the right word do?
Now a few of the lilies

44 45
 what is happening
in the branches of the pines:
the owl's young,
dressed in snowflakes,
PRAl SE
are starting to fatten- .
they beat their muscular wings:
Knee-deep
they dream of flying ' ·
in the ferns
for another million years
springing up
at the edge of the whistling swamp,
over the water,
over the ferns,
1 watch the owl
over the world's roughage .
with its satisfied,
as it bleeds and deepens.
heart-shaped face
as it flies over the water-

back and forth-

as it flutters clown
like a hellish moth
wherever the reeds twitch-

whe!lever, in the muddy cover,

sorne little life sighs
before it slides into the moonlight
and becomes a shadow.

In the distance,
awful and infallible,
the old swamp belches.
Of course

it stabs iny heart

whenever something cries out
like a teardrop.
But isn't it wonderful,

46 47
 Do you shiver
at the mere mentían
of their glossy,
shoulderless bodies?

LooKING FOR SNAKES

I would like to bring you here.
I would like you to remember
Because it is good the black flowers of thei~ faces
to be afraid- as well as their quick slithering-
but not too afraid-
I walk carefully I would like you to remember
the pretty fire that dabs out of their mouths
up the slabby hill, as well as the plunge back inÍ:o the shadows,
through laces of bracken, and the heart's thudding song.
through the thick, wild roses,
waiting for my heart

to fly up
out of the leaves
chilled
and singing,

and it dpes.
They're there-
two ofthem,
in sleepy loops-

and they rise

in a spit of energy,
like dark stalks.
among the wild, pink roses,

their mo~ths ·
narrow and stubborn,
their red eyes
staring.

48 49
 ',

I picked up something
like a honey-combed heart, 1

and something else

like a frozen flower
FisH BoNES
at the foot of the waves
and I thought of da Vin,ci-
Maybe Michelangelo
the way he kept dreaming
or Picasso
of what was inside the darkness-
could have imagined
these dream shapes,
how it wanted to rise
on its invisible muscle,
these curves and thongs,
how it wanted to shine
snow-needles,
like tire.
jaws, brain-cases,
eye sockets-

somebody, anyway,
whose mind
was in sorne clear kind
ofrapture

and p,¡:obably
in 'i:he early morning
when the sun
on its invisible muscle

was rising
over the water.
I don't think
. it was just a floundering

in the da~kness,
no matter
how much time there was.
This morning

50 51
 to gnaw through the darkness,
like wolves at bones-

what l loved, 1 mean, was that tree-

tree of the moment-tree of my own sad, mortal heart-
THE ÜAK TREE AT THE ENTRANCE
and 1 don't want to sing anymore of the way
TO BLACKWATER PoND
Osiris carne home at last~ on a clean
Every day and powerful ship, over
on my way to the pond the dangerous sea, as a taU
l pass the lightning-felled, and beautiful stranger.
chesty,
hundred-fingered, black oak
which, summers ago,
swam forward when the storm

laid one lean yellow wand against it, smoking it open

to its rosy heart.
lt dropped clown
in a veil of rain,
"'' in a cloud of sap and fire,
and became what it has been ever si.nce-
a black boat
floating
in the tossing leaves of summer,

like the coffin of Os iris

descending
upon the cloudy Nile.
But, listen, l'm tired of that brazen promise:
death and resurrection.
l'm tired of hearing how the nitrogens will return
to the earth again,
through the hinterland of patience-
how the mushrooms and the yeasts
will arrive in the wind-
how they'll anchor the pearls of their bodies and begin

52 53
 EVERYTHING NATU RE

No doubt in Holland, All night

when van Gogh was a boy, in and out the slippery shadows
there were swans drifting the owl hunted,
over the green sea the beads of blood
of the meadows, and no doubt
on sorne warm afternoon scarcely dry on the hooked beák before
he lay clown and watched them, hunger again seized him
and almost thought: this is everything. and he fell, snipping
What drove him the life from sorne plush breather,
to get up and look further
is what saves this world, and floated away
even as it breaks · into the crooked branches
the hearts of men. of the trees, that all night
In the mines where he preached, went on lapping
where he stuclied tenderness,
therc;/were only men, all of them the sunken rain, and growing,
streaked with dust. · bristling life
For years he would reach · · spreading through all their branches
toward the darkness. as one by one
But no doubt, like all of us,
he finally remembered they tossed the white moon upward
everything, including the white birds, on its slow way
weightless and unaccountable, to another morning
floatiQg around the towns in which nothing new
of grit'and hopelessness-
and this is what would finish him: would ever happen,
not the gloom, which was only terrible, which is the true gift of nature,
but those last yellow fields, where clearly which is the reason
nothing in the world mattered, or ever would, we love it.
but the insensible light.

54 55
Forgive me.
For hours l h ad tried ro sleep
and failed;
restless and wild,
SNAKE

l could settle on nothing

and fell, in envy And here is the serpent again, ,
of the things of darkness dragging himself out from his nest of da~kness,
following their sleepy course- his cave under the black rocks,
his winter-death.
the root and branch, the bloodied beak- He slides over the pine needles.
even the screams from the cold leaves He loops around the bu'nches of rising grass·,
were as red songs that rose and fell looking for the sun.
in their accustomed place.
Well, who doesn't want the sun after the long winter?
l step aside,
he feels the air with his soft tongue,
around the bones of his body he moves like oil,

downhill he goes
toward the black mirrors of the pond.
Last night it was still so cold
l woke and went out to stand in the yard,
and there was no moon.

So I just stood there, inside the jaw of nothing.

An owl cried in the distance,
I thought of Jesus, how he
crouched in t~e dark for two nights,
then floated back above the horizon.

There are so many stories,

more beautiful than answers.
I follow the snake clown to the pond,

thick and musky he is

as circular as hope.

57
56
 Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled-
to cast aside the weight of facts

THE PoNDS
and maybe even
to float a little
Every year above this difficult world.
the lilies I want to believe I am looking
are so perfect
I can hardly believe into the white fire of a great mystery;
l want to believe that the imperfecti~ns are nothing-
their lapped light crowding that the light is everything-that it is more than the sum
the black, of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.
mid-summer ponds.
Nobody could count all of them-

the muskrats swimming

among the pads and the grasses
can reach out
their muscular arms and touch

only so many(they are that

rife and wild.
But what in this world
is perfect?

I bend closer and see

how this one is clearly lopsided-
and that one wears an orange blight-
and this one i~ a glossy cheek

half nibbled away_:_

and that one is a sluinped purse
full of its own
unstoppable decay.

58 59
 SERENGETI
THE SuMMER DAY

When he comes,
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear? walking under the b~obab,
awash with the sun, or flecked
Who made the grasshopper?
with patches of shadows_:_
This grasshopper, l mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
his curled lip, under the long hair
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down- as rough as a crib of hay,
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. dappled with black flies-
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. when he comes,
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
at night, floating along the edges
l don't know exactly what a prayer is.
of the waterholes-
l do know how to pay attention, how to fall clown
when he snuffles the ground, and opens
into the grass, how to kneel clown in the grass,
-·-how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, the wet tunnel of his throat, and roars-
which is what l have beeri doing all day.
I think of the heavy-browed, crouched fishermen
Tell me, what ebe should l have done?
how they stood at dusk
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
at the rim of the cave and listened
Tell me, what is it you planto do
until it carne to them
with your one wild and precious life?
for the first time-
the terror and the awe
of the swinging, golden foot
that waits in the darkness.

Can anyone doubt that the lion of Serengeti

is part of the idea of God?
Can anyone doubt that, for those first, almost-upright bodies
in the shadow of Kilimanjaro,

60 61
 in the lush garden of Africa, among the amazements,
in the continuation of everything beyond each individual thing, and the lion
the lion runs softly through the dust,
was both the flower of life and the winch of death- and his eyes, under the thick, animal lashes,

the bone-breaker, are almost tender,

and the agent of transformation? and I don't know when I have been
No doubt, in the beginning, so frightened, .
he rose out of the grass or so happy.

like a fire-
as now he rises out of the grass,
like a fire,
gleaming and unapproachable,

and notices me,

and fixes me with his large,
almost fatherly eyes,
and flexes his shoulders.

I don't know
anything so beautiful as the sunlight
J in his rough hair.
I don't know

where I have seen such power before-

except perhaps in the chapel
where Michelangelo's God,
tawny and muscular,

tears the land from the firmament

andplaces the sun in the sky
so that we may live
on the earth,

62 63
 of the darkness
but not knowing it-
this is a poem about loving
the world and everything in it:
the self, the perpetual muscle,
THE TERNS
the passage in and out, the bristling
swing of the sea.
The birds shrug off \

the slant air,

they plunge into the sea
and vanish
under the glassy edges
of the water,
and then come back,
flying out of the waves,
as white as snow,
shaking themselves,
shaking the little silver fish,
crying out
in their own language,
voices like rough bells-
it's wonderful
and it happens whenever
,. the tide starts its gushing
journey back, every morning
or afternoon.
This is a poem
about death,
about the heart blanching
in its fold of shadows
because it knows
someday it will be
the fish and the wave
and no longer itself-
it will be those white wings,
flying in and out

64 65
 and are giving it back to the world.
If I had another life
I would want to spend it all on some
unstinting happiness.

RosEs, LATE SuMMER I would be a fox, or a tree

full of waving branches.
What happens I wouldn't mind being a rose
to the leaves after in a field full of roses.
they turn red and golden and fall
away? What happens Fear has not yet occurred to them, nor ambition.
Reason they have not yet thought of. .
to the singing birds Neither do they ask how long they must be roses, and then what.
when they can't sing Or any other foolish question.
any longer? What happens
to their quick wings?

Do you think there is any

personal heaven
for any of us?
·D0:.you think ányone,

· ··· the other side of that darkness,

will call to us, me~ning us?
Beyond the trees
the foxes keep teaching their children

to live in the valley.

so they never seem to vanish, they are always there
in the blossom of light
that stands up every morning

in the dark sky.

And over one more set of hills,
along the sea,
the last roses have opened their factories of sweetness

66 67
 It called for a miracle.
Finally the marsh softened,
and their wings cranked open
revealing the old blue light,

HERONS IN WINTER IN THE FROZEN MARSH so that I thought: how could this pqssibly be
the blunt, dark finish?
All winter First one, then the oth~r; vanished
two blue herons into the ditches and upheavals.
hunkered in the frozen marsh, 1

like two columns of blue smoke. All spring, l watched the rising blue-green grass,
above its gleaming and substantial. shadows ,
What they ate toss in the breeze,
I can't imagine, like wings.
unless it was the smalllaces
of snow that settled

in the ruckus of the cattails,

or the glazed windows of ice
under the tired
pitchforks of their feet-

so the answer is
they ate nothing,
and nothing good could come of that.
They were mired in nature, and starving.

Still, every morning

they shrugged the rime from their shoulders,
and all day they
stood to attention

in the stubbled desolation.

I was filled with admiration,
sympathy,
and, of course, empathy.

68 69
 the snow floats clown,
it sifts through the crooked branches
it doesn't hesitate, '
it settles over the ground
LooKING AT A BooK OF VAN GoGH's PAINTINGS ,
like the white fire
IN LEWISBURG, PENNSYLVANIA
it was in the beginnin~,
wherever it began ·
Don't try to pour through the black sky-
to tell me
what can or can't what a light it becomes
be done. The snow anywhere at all
it rubs against this earth:_
is falling again, this crazy old home.
perfectly at leisure
over the gray,
thin-haired backs

of the mountains of Pennsylvania.

l'm far from home.
..
,.,.. _~·:-::.
And neither are these trees-
olives ahd almonds-

home; neither is this

gathering
of sunflowers,
this yellow house,

home. Don't try to tell me

what one poor
and lonely Dutchman
; ~a? or can't do

with a brush ·
and a roll of ~anvas
and his crazy old heart.
Outside,

70 71
 How TuRTLES CoME TO SPEND THE WINTER IN THE
FoxEs IN WINTER
AQUARIUM, THEN ARE FLOWN ' SOUTH AND

Every night in the moonlight the foxes come clown the hill RELEASED BACK INT\) THE SEA

to gnaw on the bones of bircls. l never saicl

nature wasn't cruel. Once, in a city as hot as these woocls Somewhere clown beach, in the morning, at water's edge, I found
are colcl, I meta boy with a broken face. To stay a sea turtle, '
alive, he was a beggar. Also, in the night, a thief. its huge head a smolclering apricot, its shell streaming with
And there are bircls in his country that look like rainbows- seaweecl,
if he could have caught them, he would have its eyes closed, its flippers motionless.
torn off their feathers ancl put their bodies into When I bent clown, it moved a little.
his own. The foxes are hungry, who could blame them When I picked it up, it sighed.
for what they do? l never said Was it forty pouncls, or fifty pounds, or a hundred?
we weren't sunk in glittering nature, until we are able Was it two miles back to the car?
to become something else. As for the boy, it's simple. We walked a l'ittle while, and then we rested, and then we
He had nothing, not even a bird. All night the pines walked on.
··me so cold their branches crack. All night the snow falls l walked with my mouth open, my heart roared.
softly clown. Then it shines like a field The eyes opened, I clon't know what they thought.
·
of white flowers. }'hen it tightens. Sometimes the flippers swam at the air.
Sometimes the eyes closed.
l couldn't walk anymore, and then I walkecl some more
while it turned into granite, or cement, but with that
apricot-colored head,
that stillness, that Buddha-like patience, that cold-shocked
but slowly beating heart. ,
Finally, we reached the car.

The afternoon is the other part of this story.

Have you ever found something beautiful, and maybe just in time?
How such a challenge can fill you!

73
72
Jesus could walk over the water. . .
l had to walk ankle-deep in the sand, and l did It.
My bones didn't quite snap.
CROWS
Come on in, and see me smile.
1 probably won't stop for hours. .
Already, in the warmth, the turtle has raised its head, IS lt is January, and there are the crows
like black flowers on the snow.
looking around.
Today, who could deny it, laman important person. While I watch they rise and float toward the frozen pond,
they have seen '
sorne streak of death on the dark ice.
They gather around it and consume everything, the strings
and the red music of that nameless body. Then they shout,
one hungry, blunt voice echoing another.
lt begins to rain.
Later, it becomes February,
and even later, spring
returns, a chon:.ts of thousands.
They bow, and begin their important music.
I recognize the oriole.
I recognize the thrush, and the mockingbird.
I recognize the business of summer, which is to forge ahead,
delicately. ·
So I clip my fingérs among the green stems, delicately.
I lounge at the edge of the leafing pond, delicately.
I scarcely remember the crust of the snow.
I scarcely remember the icy dawns and the sun like a lamp
without a fuse. ·
I don't remember the fury of loneliness.
l never felt the wind's drift.
l never heard of the struggle between anything and nothing.
I never saw the flapping, blood-gulping crows.

75
74
 like a tremor of pure sunlight,
befare exhaustion,
that wants to swallow everything,
gripped their bones and left them

MAYBE miserable and sleepy,

as they are now, forgeqing
Sweet Jesus, talking how the wind tare at 'the sails
his melancholy madness, befare he rose and talked to it-
stood up in the boat
and the sea lay clown, tender and luminous and demanding
as he always was-
silky and sorry. a thousand times more frightening
So everybody was saved than the killer sea.
that night.
But you know how it is

when something
different crosses
the threshold-the uncles
mutter together,

the w0 men walk away,

the young brother begins
to sharpen his knife.
Nobody knows what the soul is.

It comes and goes

like the wind over the water-
sometimes, for days,

.. you don't think of it .

Maybe, after the sermon,

after the multitude was fed,
one or two of them felt
the soul slip forth

76 77
 WHITE ÜWL FLIES lNTO AND ÜUT OF THE FIELD
FIN CHES

Ice in the woods, snow in the fields, a few finches singing. Coming dowq.
out of the freezing sky
l look up in time to see their raspberry-colored faces
with its depths of light,
and the black tears on their breasts.
like an angel, '
Of course, they are just trying to stay alive
or a buddha with wings,
like the frozen river and the crows.
But who would guess that, the way they dangle the bright it was beautiful
and accurate,
necklaces of their music striking the snow and whatever was there
from the tops of the trees? _
Before nightfall, they'd better find where the last sprays of seeds with a force that left the imprint
of the tips of its wings-
have fallen, five feet apart-and the grabbing
they'd better find shelter from the wind.
thrust of its feet,
And there they go, tiny rosettes of energy,
and the indentation of what had been running
as though nothing in this world was frightening-
as'though the only thing that mattered was to praise the world through the white valleys
ofthe snow-
, __. sufficiently-
as though they we¡:e only looking, light-heartedly, for the next
_ and then it rose, gracefully,
~~~~ro~ ' ·and flew back to the frozen marshes
and here l am, at home again, out of the snowy fields, where l will '
take off my jacket, and sit clown at the table, and go over to lurk there,
like a little lighthouse,
my verses again. in the blue shadows-
so I thought:
maybe death
isn't darkness, after all,
but so much light
wrapping itself around us-

as soft as feathers-
that we are instantly weary
of looking, and looking, and shut our eyes,

78 79
 not without amazement,
and let ourselves be carried,
as through the translucence of mica,
to the river
that is without the least dapple or shadow-
that is nothing but light-scalding , aortal light-
in which we are washed and washed
out of our bones.

80