A Thousand Mornings Read online

  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
/>   I was in need of,

  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.