by Mary Oliver
SELECT TITLES ALSO BY MARY OLIVER
POETRY
American Primitive
Dream Work
New and Selected Poems Volume One
White Pine
The Leaf and the Cloud
What Do We Know
Why I Wake Early
New and Selected Poems Volume Two
Swan
PROSE
Blue Pastures
Winter Hours
A Poetry Handbook
THE PENGUIN PRESS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in 2012 by The Penguin Press,
a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Copyright © Mary Oliver, 2012
All rights reserved
The acknowledgments constitutes an extension of this copyright page.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Oliver, Mary.
A thousand mornings / Mary Oliver.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-101-59597-8
I. Title.
PS3565.L5T54 2012
811'.54—dc23 2012027310
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
For
Anne Taylor
CONTENTS
Also by Mary Oliver
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
I GO DOWN TO THE SHORE
I HAPPENED TO BE STANDING
FOOLISHNESS? NO, IT’S NOT
THE GARDENER
AFTER I FALL DOWN THE STAIRS AT THE GOLDEN TEMPLE
IF I WERE
GOOD-BYE, FOX
POEM OF THE ONE WORLD
AND BOB DYLAN TOO
THREE THINGS TO REMEMBER
HURRICANE
TODAY
THE FIRST TIME PERCY CAME BACK
LINES WRITTEN IN THE DAYS OF GROWING DARKNESS
BLAKE DYING
THE MOCKINGBIRD
THE MOTH, THE MOUNTAINS, THE RIVERS
A THOUSAND MORNINGS
AN OLD STORY
HUM, HUM
I HAVE DECIDED
WAS IT NECESSARY TO DO IT?
GREEN, GREEN IS MY SISTER’S HOUSE
THE INSTANT
THE WAY OF THE WORLD
EXTENDING THE AIRPORT RUNWAY
TIDES
OUT OF THE STUMP ROT, SOMETHING
IN OUR WOODS, SOMETIMES A RARE MUSIC
THE MORNING PAPER
THE POET COMPARES HUMAN NATURE TO THE OCEAN FROM WHICH WE CAME
ON TRAVELING TO BEAUTIFUL PLACES
THE MAN WHO HAS MANY ANSWERS
LIFE STORY
“FOR I WILL CONSIDER MY DOG PERCY”
VARANASI
Note
Acknowledgments
The life that I could still live, I should live, and the thoughts that I could still think, I should think.
—C. G. Jung, The Red Book
Anything worth thinking about is worth singing about.
—Bob Dylan, The Essential Interviews
I GO DOWN TO THE SHORE
I go down to the shore in the morning
and depending on the hour the waves
are rolling in or moving out,
and I say, oh, I am miserable,
what shall—
what should I do? And the sea says
in its lovely voice:
Excuse me, I have work to do.
I HAPPENED TO BE STANDING
I don’t know where prayers go,
or what they do.
Do cats pray, while they sleep
half-asleep in the sun?
Does the opossum pray as it
crosses the street?
The sunflowers? The old black oak
growing older every year?
I know I can walk through the world,
along the shore or under the trees,
with my mind filled with things
of little importance, in full
self-attendance. A condition I can’t really
call being alive.
Is a prayer a gift, or a petition,
or does it matter?
The sunflowers blaze, maybe that’s their way.
Maybe the cats are sound asleep. Maybe not.
While I was thinking this I happened to be standing
just outside my door, with my notebook open,
which is the way I begin every morning.
Then a wren in the privet began to sing.
He was positively drenched in enthusiasm,
I don’t know why. And yet, why not.
I wouldn’t persuade you from whatever you believe
or whatever you don’t. That’s your business.
But I thought, of the wren’s singing, what could this be
if it isn’t a prayer?
So I just listened, my pen in the air.
FOOLISHNESS? NO, IT’S NOT
Sometimes I spend all day trying to count the leaves on a single tree. To do this I have to climb branch by branch and write down the numbers in a little book. So I suppose, from their point of view, it’s reasonable that my friends say: what foolishness! She’s got her head in the clouds again.
But it’s not. Of course I have to give up, but by then I’m half crazy with the wonder of it—the abundance of the leaves, the quietness of the branches, the hopelessness of my effort. And I am in that delicious and important place, roaring with laughter, full of earth-praise.
THE GARDENER
Have I lived enough?
Have I loved enough?
Have I considered Right Action enough, have I
come to any conclusion?
Have I experienced happiness with sufficient gratitude?
Have I endured loneliness with grace?
I say this, or perhaps I’m just thinking it.
Actually, I probably think too much.
Then I step out into the garden,
where the gardener, who is said to be a simple man,
is tending his children, the roses.
AFTER I FALL DOWN THE STAIRS AT THE GOLDEN TEMPLE
For a while I could not remember some word
and I was bereaved and said: where are you,
beloved friend?
IF I WERE
There are lots of ways to dance and to spin, sometimes it just starts my feet first then my entire body, I am spinning no one can see it but it is happening. I am so glad to be alive, I am so glad to be loving and loved. Even if I were close to the finish, even if I were at my final breath, I would be here to take a stand, bereft of such astonishments, but for them.
If I were a Sufi for sure I would be one of the spinning kind.
GOOD-BYE FOX
He was lying under a tree, licking up the shade.
Hello again, Fox, I said.
And hello to you too, said Fox, looking up and
not bounding away.
You’re not running away? I said.
Well, I’ve heard of your conversation about us. News
travels even among foxes, as you might know or not know.
What conversation do you mean?
Some lady said to you, “The hunt is good for the fox.”
And you said, “Which fox?”
Yes, I remember. She was huffed.
So you’re okay in my book.
Your book! That was in my book, that’s the difference
between us.
Yes, I agree. You fuss over life with your clever
words, mulling and chewing on its meaning, while
we just live it.
Oh!
Could anyone figure it out, to a finality? So
why spend so much time trying. You fuss, we live.
And he stood, slowly, for he was old now, and
ambled away.
POEM OF THE ONE WORLD
This morning
the beautiful white heron
was floating along above the water
and then into the sky of this
the one world
we all belong to
where everything
sooner or later
is a part of everything else
which thought made me feel
for a little while
quite beautiful myself.
AND BOB DYLAN TOO
“Anything worth thinking about is worth
singing about.”
Which is why we have
songs of praise, songs of love, songs
of sorrow.
Songs to the gods, who have
so many names.
Songs the shepherds sing, on the
lonely mountains, while the sheep
are honoring the grass, by eating it.
The dance-songs of the bees, to tell
where the flowers, suddenly, in the
morning light, have opened.
A chorus of many, shouting to heaven,
or at it, or pleading.
Or that greatest of love affairs, a violin
and a human body.
And a composer, maybe hundreds of years dead.
I think of Schubert, scribbling on a café
napkin.
Thank you, thank you.
THREE THINGS TO REMEMBER
As long as you’re dancing, you can
break the rules.
Sometimes breaking the rules is just
extending the rules.
Sometimes there are no rules.
HURRICANE
It didn’t behave
like anything you had
ever imagined. The wind
tore at the trees, the rain
fell for days slant and hard.
The back of the hand
to everything. I watched
the trees bow and their leaves fall
and crawl back into the earth.
As though, that was that.
This was one hurricane
I lived through, the other one
was of a different sort, and
lasted longer. Then
I felt my own leaves giving up and
falling. The back of the hand to
everything. But listen now to what happened
to the actual trees;
toward the end of that summer they
pushed new leaves from their stubbed limbs.
It was the wrong season, yes,
but they couldn’t stop. They
looked like telephone poles and didn’t
care. And after the leaves came
blossoms. For some things
there are no wrong seasons.
Which is what I dream of for me.
TODAY
Today I’m flying low and I’m
not saying a word.
I’m letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep.
The world goes on as it must,
the bees in the garden rumbling a little,
the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten.
And so forth.
But I’m taking the day off.
Quiet as a feather.
I hardly move though really I’m traveling
a terrific distance.
Stillness. One of the doors
into the temple.
THE FIRST TIME PERCY CAME BACK
The first time Percy came back
he was not sailing on a cloud.
He was loping along the sand as though
he had come a great way.
“Percy,” I cried out, and reached to him—
those white curls—
but he was unreachable. As music
is present yet you can’t touch it.
“Yes, it’s all different,” he said.
“You’re going to be very surprised.”
But I wasn’t thinking of that. I only
wanted to hold him. “Listen,” he said,
“I miss that too.
And now you’ll be telling stories
of my coming back
and they won’t be false, and they won’t be true,
but they’ll be real.”
And then, as he used to, he said, “Let’s go!”
And we walked down the beach together.
LINES WRITTEN IN THE DAYS OF GROWING DARKNESS
Every year we have been
witness to it: how the
world descends
into a rich mash, in order that
it may resume.
And therefore
who would cry out
to the petals on the ground
to stay,
knowing as we must,
how the vivacity of what was is married
to the vitality of what will be?
I don’t say
it’s easy, but
what else will do
if the love one claims to have for the world
be true?
So let us go on, cheerfully enough,
this and every crisping day,
though the sun be swinging east,
and the ponds be cold and black,
and the sweets of the year be doomed.
BLAKE DYING
He lay
with the pearl of his life under the pillow.
Space shone, cool and silvery,
in the empty cupboards
while he heard in the distance, he said,
the angels singing.
Now and again his white wrists
rose a little above the white sheet.
When death is about to happen
does the bo
dy grow heavier, or lighter?
He felt himself growing heavier.
He felt himself growing lighter.
When a man says he hears angels singing
he hears angels singing.
When a man says he hears angels singing,
he hears angels singing.
THE MOCKINGBIRD
All summer
the mockingbird
in his pearl-gray coat
and his white-windowed wings
flies
from the hedge to the top of the pine
and begins to sing, but it’s neither
lilting nor lovely,
for he is the thief of other sounds—
whistles and truck brakes and dry hinges
plus all the songs
of other birds in his neighborhood;
mimicking and elaborating,
he sings with humor and bravado,
so I have to wait a long time
for the softer voice of his own life
to come through. He begins
by giving up all his usual flutter
and settling down on the pine’s forelock
then looking around
as though to make sure he’s alone;
then he slaps each wing against his breast,
where his heart is,
and, copying nothing, begins
easing into it
as though it was not half so easy
as rollicking,
as though his subject now
was his true self,
which of course was as dark and secret
as anyone else’s,
and it was too hard—
perhaps you understand—
to speak or to sing it
to anything or anyone
but the sky.
THE MOTH, THE MOUNTAINS, THE RIVERS
Who can guess the luna’s sadness who lives so briefly? Who can guess the impatience of stone longing to be ground down, to be part again of something livelier? Who can imagine in what heaviness the rivers remember their original clarity?
Strange questions, yet I have spent worthwhile time with them. And Isuggest them to you also, that your spirit grow in curiosity, that your life be richer than it is, that you bow to the earth as you feel how it actually is, that we—so clever, and ambitious, and selfish, and unrestrained— are only one design of the moving, the vivacious many.
