West Wind Read online

  West Wind

  POEMS AND PROSE POEMS

  Mary Oliver

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  ...

  Copyright

  Dedication

  CONTENTS

  Part I

  Seven White Butterflies

  At Round Pond

  Black Oaks

  The Dog Has Run Off Again

  Am I Not Among the Early Risers

  Pilot Snake

  So

  Spring

  Stars

  Three Songs

  Shelley

  Maples

  The Osprey

  That Sweet Flute John Clare

  Sand Dabs, Three

  Forty Years

  Black Snake This Time

  Morning Walk

  Rain, Tree, Thunder and Lightning

  The Rapture

  Fox

  Gratitude

  Little Summer Poem Touching the Subject of Faith

  Dogs

  At the Shore

  At Great Pond

  Part 2

  WEST WIND

  Part 3

  Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY Boston New York 1997

  Copyright © 1997 by Mary Oliver

  All rights reserved

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from

  this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company,

  215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  For information about this and other Houghton Mifflin

  trade and reference books and multimedia products, visit The

  Bookstore at Houghton Mifflin on the World Wide Web at

  http://www.hmco.com/trade/.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Oliver, Mary, date.

  West wind / Mary Oliver.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-395-85082-7

  I. Title.

  PS3565.L5W4 1997

  811'.54 —dc21 97-2986 CIP

  Design by Anne Chalmers

  Typeface: Adobe Garamond

  Printed in the United States of America

  QUM 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  FOR

  MOLLY MALONE COOK

  CONTENTS

  Part I

  Seven White Butterflies [>]

  At Round Pond [>]

  Black Oaks [>]

  The Dog Has Run Off Again [>]

  Am I Not Among the Early Risers [>]

  Pilot Snake [>]

  So [>]

  Spring [>]

  Stars [>]

  Three Songs [>]

  Shelley [>]

  Maples [>]

  The Osprey [>]

  That Sweet Flute John Clare [>]

  Sand Dabs, Three [>]

  Forty Years [>]

  Black Snake This Time [>]

  Morning Walk [>]

  Rain, Tree, Thunder and Lightning [>]

  The Rapture [>]

  Fox [>]

  Gratitude [>]

  Little Summer Poem Touching the Subject of Faith [>]

  Dogs [>]

  At the Shore [>]

  At Great Pond [>]

  Part 2

  WEST WIND

  1. If there is life after the earth-life, will you come with me? [>]

  2. You are young. So you know everything. [>]

  3. And the speck of my heart... [>]

  4. But how did you come burning down... [>]

  5. There are night birds, in the garden... [>]

  6. When the sun goes down... [>]

  7. We see Bill only occasionally... [>]

  8. The young, tall English poet... [>]

  9. And what did you think love would be like? [>]

  10. Dark is as dark does. [>]

  11. Now only the humorous shadows... [>]

  12. The cricket did not actually seek... [>]

  13. It is midnight, or almost. [>]

  Part 3

  Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches [>]

  Acknowledgments [>]

  Part I

  Some persons of a scientific turn were once discoursing pompously and, to him, distastefully, about the incredible distance of the planets, the length of time light takes to travel to the earth, &c., when he burst out," 'Tis false! I was walking down a lane the other day, and at the end of it I touched the sky with my stick."

  —Life and Works of William Blake, A. Gilchrist

  Seven White Butterflies

  Seven white butterflies

  delicate in a hurry look

  how they bang the pages

  of their wings as they fly

  to the fields of mustard yellow

  and orange and plain

  gold all eternity

  is in the moment this is what

  Blake said Whitman said such

  wisdom in the agitated

  motions of the mind seven

  dancers floating

  even as worms toward

  paradise see how they banter

  and riot and rise

  to the trees flutter

  lob their white bodies into

  the invisible wind weightless

  lacy willing

  to deliver themselves unto

  the universe now each settles

  down on a yellow thumb on a

  brassy stem now

  all seven are rapidly sipping

  from the golden towers who

  would have thought it could be so easy?

  At Round Pond

  owl

  make your little appearance now

  owl dark bird bird of gloom

  messenger reminder

  of death

  that can't be stopped

  argued with leashed put out

  like a red fire but

  burns as it will

  owl

  I have not seen you now for

  too long a time don't

  hide away but come flowing and clacking

  the slap of your wings

  your death's head oh rise

  out of the thick and shaggy pines when you

  look down with your

  golden eyes how everything

  trembles

  then settles

  from mere incidence into

  the lush of meaning.

  Black Oaks

  Okay, not one can write a symphony, or a dictionary,

  or even a letter to an old friend, full of remembrance

  and comfort.

  Not one can manage a single sound, though the blue jays

  carp and whistle all day in the branches, without

  the push of the wind.

  But to tell the truth after a while I'm pale with longing

  for their thick bodies ruckled with lichen

  and you can't keep me from the woods, from the tonnage

  of their shoulders, and their shining green hair.

  Today is a day like any other: twenty-four hours, a

  little sunshine, a little rain.

  Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from

  one boot to another—why don't you get going?

  For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees.

  And to tell the truth I don't want to let go of the wrists

  of idleness, I don't want to sell my life for money,

  I don't even want to come in out of the rain.

  The Dog Has Run Off Again

  and I should start shouting his name

  and clapping my hands,

  but it has been raining all night

  and the narrow creek has risen
>
  is a tawny turbulence is rushing along

  over the mossy stones

  is surging forward

  with a sweet loopy music

  and therefore I don't want to entangle it

  with my own voice

  calling summoning

  my little dog to hurry back

  look the sunlight and the shadows are chasing each other

  listen how the wind swirls and leaps and dives up and down

  who am I to summon his hard and happy body

  his four white feet that love to wheel and pedal

  through the dark leaves

  to come back to walk by my side, obedient.

  Am I Not Among the Early Risers

  Am I not among the early risers

  and the long-distance walkers?

  Have I not stood, amazed, as I consider

  the perfection of the morning star

  above the peaks of the houses, and the crowns of the trees

  blue in the first light?

  Do I not see how the trees tremble, as though

  sheets of water flowed over them

  though it is only wind, that common thing,

  free to everyone, and everything?

  Have I not thought, for years, what it would be

  worthy to do, and then gone off, barefoot and with a silver pail,

  to gather blueberries,

  thus coming, as I think, upon a right answer?

  What will ambition do for me that the fox, appearing suddenly

  at the top of the field,

  her eyes sharp and confident as she stared into mine,

  has not already done?

  What countries, what visitations,

  what pomp

  would satisfy me as thoroughly as Blackwater Woods

  on a sun-filled morning, or, equally, in the rain?

  Here is an amazement—once I was twenty years old and in

  every motion of my body there was a delicious ease,

  and in every motion of the green earth there was

  a hint of paradise,

  and now I am sixty years old, and it is the same.

  Above the modest house and the palace—the same darkness.

  Above the evil man and the just, the same stars.

  Above the child who will

  recover and the child who will not recover, the same energies roll forward,

  from one tragedy to the next and from one foolishness to the next.

  I bow down.

  Have I not loved as though the beloved could vanish at any moment,

  or become preoccupied, or whisper a name other than mine

  in the stretched curvatures of lust, or over the dinner table?

  Have I ever taken good fortune for granted?

  Have I not, every spring, befriended the swarm that pours forth?

  Have I not summoned the honey-man to come, to hurry,

  to bring with him the white and comfortable hive?

  And, while I waited, have I not leaned close, to see everything?

  Have I not been stung as I watched their milling and gleaming,

  and stung hard?

  Have I not been ready always at the iron door,

  not knowing to what country it opens—to death or to more life?

  Have I ever said that the day was too hot or too cold

  or the night too long and as black as oil anyway,

  or the morning, washed blue and emptied entirely

  of the second-rate, less than happiness

  as I stepped down from the porch and set out along

  the green paths of the world?

  Pilot Snake

  had it

  lived it would have grown

  from twelve inches to a

  hundred maybe would have

  set out to eat

  all the rats of the world and managed

  a few would have frightened

  somebody sooner or later

  as it crossed the road would have been

  feared and hated and shied away from

  black glass lunging

  in the green sea

  in the long blades of the grass

  but now look death too

  is a carpenter how all his

  helpers the shining ants

  labor the tiny

  knives of their mouths

  dipping and slashing how they

  hurry in and out

  of that looped body taking

  apart opening up now the soul

  flashes like a star and is gone there is only

  that soft dark building

  death.

  So

  This morning

  the dogs

  were romping and stomping

  on their nailed feet—

  they had hemmed in

  a little thing—

  a field mouse—

  so I picked it up

  and held it

  in the purse of my hands,

  where it was safe—

  but it turned

  on the blank face

  of my thumb—

  in a burst

  of seedy teeth

  it sprinkled

  my whole body with sudden

  nails of pain.

  The dogs

  were long gone—

  so under

  an old pine tree,

  on the spicy needles,

  I put it down,

  and it dashed away.

  For an instant

  the whole world

  was still.

  Then the wind

  fluttered its wrists, a

  sweet music as usual,

  though as usual I could not tell

  whether it was about caring or not caring

  that it tossed itself around, in the boughs of light,

  and sang.

  Spring

  This morning

  two birds

  fell down the side of the maple tree

  like a tuft of fire

  a wheel of fire

  a love knot

  out of control as they plunged through the air

  pressed against each other

  and I thought

  how I meant to live a quiet life

  how I meant to live a life of mildness and meditation

  tapping the careful words against each other

  and I thought—

  as though I were suddenly spinning, like a bar of silver

  as though I had shaken my arms and lo! they were wings—

  of the Buddha

  when he rose from his green garden

  when he rose in his powerful ivory body

  when he turned to the long dusty road without end

  when he covered his hair with ribbons and the petals of flowers

  when he opened his hands to the world.

  Stars

  Here in my head, language

  keeps making its tiny noises.

  How can I hope to be friends

  with the hard white stars

  whose flaring and hissing are not speech

  but a pure radiance?

  How can I hope to be friends

  with the yawning spaces between them

  where nothing, ever, is spoken?

  Tonight, at the edge of the field,

  I stood very still, and looked up,

  and tried to be empty of words.

  What joy was it, that almost found me?

  What amiable peace?

  Then it was over, the wind

  roused up in the oak trees behind me

  and I fell back, easily.

  Earth has a hundred thousand pure contraltos—

  even the distant night bird

  as it talks threat, as it talks love

  over the cold, black fields.

  Once, deep in the woods,

  I found the white skull of a bear

  and it was utterly silent—

  and once a river
otter, in a steel trap,

  and it too was utterly silent.

  What can we do

  but keep on breathing in and out,

  modest and willing, and in our places?

  Listen, listen, I'm forever saying,

  Listen to the river, to the hawk, to the hoof,

  to the mockingbird, to the jack-in-the-pulpit—

  then I come up with a few words, like a gift.

  Even as now.

  Even as the darkness has remained the pure, deep darkness.

  Even as the stars have twirled a little, while I stood here,

  looking up,

  one hot sentence after another.

  Three Songs

  1

  A band of wild turkeys is coming down the hill. They are coming slowly—as they walk along they look under the leaves for things to eat, and besides it must be a pleasure to step alternately through the pale sunlight, then patches of slightly golden shade. They are all hens and they lift their thick toes delicately. With such toes they could march up one side of the state and down the other, or skate on water, or dance the tango. But not this morning. As they get closer the sound of their feet in the leaves is like the patter of rain, then rapid rain. My dogs perk their ears, and bound from the path. Instead of opening their dark wings the hens swirl and rush away under the trees, like little ostriches.

  2

  The meadowlark, with his yellow breast and a sort of limping flight, sings into the morning which, in this case, is perfectly blue, lucid, measureless, and without the least bump of wind. The meadowlark is a spirit, and an epiphany, if I so desire it. I need only to hear him to make something fine, even advisory, of the occasion.

  And have you made inquiry yet as to what the poetry of this world is about? For what purpose do we seek it, and ponder it, and give it such value?

  And also this is true—that if I consider the golden whistler and the song that pours from his narrow throat in the context of evolution, of reptiles, of Cambrian waters, of the body's wish to change, of the body's incredible crafts and efforts, of life's multitudes, of the winners and the losers, I lose nothing of the original occasion, and its infinite sweetness. For this is my skill—I am capable of pondering the most detailed knowledge, and the most fastened-up, impenetrable mystery, at the same time.

  3

  There is so much communication and understanding beneath and apart from the substantiations of language spoken out or written down that language is almost no more than a compression, or elaboration—an exactitude, declared emphasis, emotion-in-syntax—not at all essential to the message. And therefore, as an elegance, as something almost superfluous, it is likely (because it is free to be so used) to be carefully shaped, to take risks, to begin and even prolong adventures that may turn out poorly after all—and all in the cause of the crisp flight and the buzzing bliss of the words, as well as their directive—to make, of the body-bright commitment to life, and its passions, including (of course!) the passion of meditation, an exact celebration, or inquiry, employing grammar, mirth, and wit in a precise and intelligent way. Language is, in other words, not necessary, but voluntary. If it were necessary, it would have stayed simple; it would not agitate our hearts with ever-present loveliness and ever-cresting ambiguity; it would not dream, on its long white bones, of turning into song.