House of Light Read online

  OTHER BOOKS BY MARY OLIVER

  Dream Work

  American Primitive

  Twelve Moons

  The River Styx, Ohio and Other Poems

  No Voyage and Other Poems

  CHAPBOOKS

  Sleeping in the Forest

  The Night Traveler

  For

  Molly Malone Cook

  CONTENTS

  SOME QUESTIONS YOU MIGHT ASK

  MOCCASIN FLOWERS

  THE BUDDHA’S LAST INSTRUCTION

  SPRING

  SINGAPORE

  THE HERMIT CRAB

  LILIES

  WINGS

  THE SWAN

  THE KINGFISHER

  INDONESIA

  “ICH BIN DER WELT ABHANDEN GEKOMMEN”

  TURTLE

  THE DEER

  THE LOON ON OAK-HEAD POND

  WHAT IS IT?

  WRITING POEMS

  SOME HERONS

  FIVE A.M. IN THE PINEWOODS

  LITTLE OWL WHO LIVES IN THE ORCHARD

  THE GIFT

  PIPEFISH

  THE KOOKABURRAS

  THE LILIES BREAK OPEN OVER THE DARK WATER

  DEATH AT A GREAT DISTANCE

  THE NOTEBOOK

  PRAISE

  LOOKING FOR SNAKES

  FISH BONES

  THE OAK TREE AT THE ENTRANCE TO BLACKWATER POND

  EVERYTHING

  NATURE

  SNAKE

  THE PONDS

  THE SUMMER DAY

  SERENGETI

  THE TERNS

  ROSES, LATE SUMMER

  HERONS IN WINTER IN THE FROZEN MARSH

  LOOKING AT A BOOK OF VAN GOGH’S PAINTINGS, IN LEWISBURG, PENNSYLVANIA

  FOXES IN WINTER

  HOW TURTLES COME TO SPEND THE WINTER IN THE AQUARIUM, THEN ARE FLOWN SOUTH AND RELEASED BACK INTO THE SEA

  CROWS

  MAYBE

  FINCHES

  WHITE OWL FLIES INTO AND OUT OF THE FIELD

  SOME QUESTIONS YOU MIGHT 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 face 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 think 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?

  MOCCASIN FLOWERS

  All my life,

  so far,

  I have loved

  more than one thing,

  including the mossy hooves

  of dreams, including

  the spongy litter

  under the tall trees.

  In spring

  the moccasin flowers

  reach for the crackling

  lick of the sun

  and burn down. Sometimes,

  in the shadows,

  I see the hazy eyes,

  the lamb-lips

  of oblivion,

  its deep drowse,

  and I can imagine a new nothing

  in the universe,

  the matted leaves splitting

  open, revealing

  the black planks

  of the stairs.

  But all my life—so far—

  I have loved best

  how the flowers rise

  and open, how

  the pink lungs of their bodies

  enter the fire of the world

  and stand there shining

  and willing—the one

  thing they can do before

  they shuffle forward

  into the floor of darkness, they

  become the trees.

  THE BUDDHA’S LAST INSTRUCTION

  “Make of yourself a light,”

  said the Buddha,

  before 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 down

  between two sala trees,

  and he might have said anything,

  knowing it was his final hour.

  The light burns upward,

  it thickens and settles over the fields.

  Around him, the villagers gathered

  and stretched forward to listen.

  Even before 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 blazes over the hills,

  like a million flowers on fire—

  clearly I’m not needed,

  yet I feel myself turning

  into something of inexplicable value.

  Slowly, beneath the branches,

  he raised his head.

  He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.

  SPRING

  Somewhere

  a black bear

  has just risen from sleep

  and is staring

  down the mountain.

  All night

  in the brisk and shallow restlessness

  of early spring

  I think of her,

  her four black fists

  flicking the gravel,

  her tongue

  like a red fire

  touching the grass,

  the cold water.

  There is only one question:

  how to love this world.

  I think of her

  rising

  like a black and leafy ledge

  to sharpen her claws against

  the silence

  of the trees.

  Whatever else

  my life is

  with its poems

  and its music

  and its glass cities,

  it is also this dazzling darkness

  coming

  down the mountain,

  breathing and tasting;

  all day I think of her—

  her white teeth,

  her wordlessness,

  her perfect love.

  SINGAPORE

  In Singapore, in the airport,

  a darkness was ripped from my eyes.

  In the women’s restroom, one compartment stood open.

  A woman knelt there, washing something in the white bowl.

  Disgust argued in my stomach

  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 to stand in a happy place, in a poem.

  When the woman tu
rned 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 down at her labor, which is dull enough.

  She is washing 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.

  I don’t doubt for a moment that she loves her life.

  And I want her to rise up from the crust and the slop and fly down to the river.

  This probably won’t happen.

  But maybe it will.

  If the world were only pain and logic, who would want it?

  Of course, it isn’t.

  Neither do I mean anything miraculous, but only

  the light that can shine out of a life. I mean

  the way she unfolded and refolded the blue cloth,

  the way her smile was only for my sake; I mean

  the way this poem is filled with trees, and birds.

  THE HERMIT CRAB

  Once I looked inside

  the darkness

  of a shell folded like a pastry,

  and there was a fancy face—

  or almost a face—

  it turned away

  and frisked up its brawny forearms

  so quickly

  against the light

  and my looking in

  I scarcely had time to see it,

  gleaming

  under the pure white roof

  of old calcium.

  When I set it down, it hurried

  along the tideline

  of the sea,

  which was slashing along as usual,

  shouting and hissing

  toward the future,

  turning its back

  with every tide on the past,

  leaving the shore littered

  every morning

  with more ornaments of death—

  what a pearly rubble

  from which to choose a house

  like a white flower—

  and what a rebellion

  to leap into it

  and hold on,

  connecting everything,

  the past to the future—

  which is of course the miracle—

  which is the only argument there is

  against the sea.

  LILIES

  I have been thinking

  about living

  like the lilies

  that blow in the fields.

  They rise and fall

  in the wedge of the wind,

  and have no shelter

  from the tongues of the cattle,

  and have no closets or cupboards,

  and have no legs.

  Still I would like to be

  as wonderful

  as that old idea.

  But if I were a lily

  I think I would wait all day

  for the green face

  of the hummingbird

  to touch me.

  What I mean is,

  could I forget myself

  even in those feathery fields?

  When van Gogh

  preached to the poor

  of course he wanted to save someone—

  most of all himself.

  He wasn’t a lily,

  and wandering through the bright fields

  only gave him more ideas

  it would take his life to solve.

  I think I will always be lonely

  in this world, where the cattle

  graze like a black and white river—

  where the ravishing lilies

  melt, without protest, on their tongues—

  where the hummingbird, whenever there is a fuss,

  just rises and floats away.

  WINGS

  I saw the heron

  poise

  like a branch of white petals

  in the swamp,

  in the mud that lies

  like a glaze,

  in the water

  that swirls its pale panels

  of reflected clouds;

  I saw the heron shaking

  its damp wings—

  and then I felt

  an explosion—

  a pain—

  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,

  under the mottled sky

  of the evening

  that was beginning to throw

  its dense shadows.

  No! said my heart, and drew back.

  But my bones knew something wonderful

  about the darkness—

  and they thrashed in their cords,

  they fought, they wanted

  to lie down in that silky mash

  of the swamp, the sooner

  to fly.

  THE SWAN

  Across the wide waters

  something comes

  floating—a slim

  and delicate

  ship, filled

  with white flowers—

  and it moves

  on its miraculous muscles

  as though time didn’t exist,

  as though bringing such gifts

  to the dry shore

  was a happiness

  almost 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, what shall I do

  when that poppy-colored beak

  rests in my hand?

  Said Mrs. Blake of the poet:

  I miss my husband’s company—

  he is so often

  in paradise.

  Of course! the path to heaven

  doesn’t lie down in flat miles.

  It’s in the imagination

  with which you perceive

  this world,

  and the gestures

  with which you honor it.

  Oh, what will I do, what will I say, when those

  white wings

  touch the shore?

  THE KINGFISHER

  The kingfisher rises out of the black wave

  like a blue flower, in his beak

  he carries a silver leaf. I think this is

  the prettiest world—so long as you don’t mind

  a little dying, how could there be a day in your whole life

  that doesn’t have its splash of happiness?

  There are more fish than there are leaves

  on a thousand trees, and anyway the kingfisher

  wasn’t born to think about it, or anything else.

  When the wave snaps shut over his blue head, the water

  remains water—hunger is the only story

  he has ever heard in his life that he could believe.

  I don’t say he’s right. Neither

  do I say he’s wrong. Religiously he swallows the silver leaf

  with its broken red river, and with a rough and easy cry

  I couldn’t rouse out of my thoughtful body

  if my life depended on it, he swings back

  over the bright sea to do the same thing, to do it

  (as I long to do something, anything) perfectly.

  INDONESIA

  On the curving, dusty roads

  we drove through the plantations

  where the pickers balanced on the hot hillsides—

  then we clim
bed toward the green trees,

  toward the white scarves of the clouds,

  to the inn that is never closed

  in this island of fairest weather.

  The sun hung like a stone,

  time dripped away like a steaming river

  and from somewhere a dry tongue lashed out

  its single motto: now and forever.

  And the pickers balanced on the hot hillsides

  like gray and blue blossoms,

  wrapped in their heavy layers of clothes

  against the whips of the branches

  in that world of leaves no poor man,

  with a brown face and an empty sack,

  has ever picked his way out of.

  At the inn 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.

  “ICH BIN DER WELT ABHANDEN GEKOMMEN”

  Today is

  Gustav Mahler’s

  birthday, and

  as usual I went out

  early into the sea-green

  morning where the birds

  were singing,

  all over but mostly

  at the scalloped edges

  of the ponds

  and in the branches of the trees,

  which flared out and down,

  like the clothes of our spirits

  patiently waiting.

  For hours I 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,

  bristling and aching delight

  at the world

  which has been like this

  forever and forever—

  the leaves,

  the birds, the ponds,

  the loneliness,

  and, sometimes,

  from a lifetime ago

  and another country

  such a willing and lilting companion—

  a song

  made so obviously for me.

  At what unknowable cost.

  And by a stranger.

  TURTLE

  Now I see it—

  it nudges with its bulldog head

  the slippery stems of the lilies, making them tremble;

  and now it noses along in the wake of the little brown teal

  who is leading her soft children

  from one side of the pond to the other; she keeps

  close to the edge

  and they follow closely, the good children—

  the tender children,