Poetry Will Save Your Soul

Oddly, on this cold, late Spring week of the new moon near the end of Aries, Pagans all over the web are quoting Mary Oliver. My circle of women has an expression: "doesn't know that she's a witch" to describe women like my favorite poet.

Deborah Oak quotes Oliver:

Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.

while buying garden Gnome Chomskys.

Meanwhile, the Furious Spinner links to another of my favorite Oliver poems, one that got me through one of the most difficult times in my life:

Little Summer Poem Touching the Subject of Faith

Every summer
I listen and look
under the sun's brass and even
into the moonlight, but I can't hear

anything, I can't see anything --
not the pale roots digging down, nor the green stalks muscling up,
nor the leaves
deepening their damp pleats,

nor the tassels making,
nor the shucks, nor the cobs.
And still,
every day,

the leafy fields
grow taller and thicker --
green gowns lofting up in the night,
showered with silk.

And so, every summer,
I fail as a witness, seeing nothing --
I am deaf too
to the tick of the leaves,

the tapping of downwardness from the banyan feet --
all of it
happening
beyond any seeable proof, or hearable hum.

And, therefore, let the immeasurable come.
Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine.
Let the wind turn in the trees,
and the mystery hidden in the dirt

swing through the air.
How could I look at anything in this world
and tremble, and grip my hands over my heart?
What should I fear?

One morning
in the leafy green ocean
the honeycomb of the corn's beautiful body
is sure to be there.

~ Mary Oliver ~

(West Wind)

I have been reciting this poem to myself, affirming my belief that Summer will come, corn will come, the unknowable will touch the buckle of my spine. So mote it be.

I'll add my own personal Oliver, which I've posted before, to this Pagan homage to Oliver on a difficult week:

When Death Comes
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox:

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

-- Mary Oliver

You can be young when Death comes for you, as were the students at Virginia Tech, and as are so many students in iraq. You can be old, as was Kurt Vonnegut the other week, It doesn't matter. What matters is whether you end up having simply visited this world or, whether, like Oliver, you spend your time as the bride, married to amazement; as the bridegroom, taking the world into your arms. Go take the world into your arms. It's lonely for you.