New and Selected Poems, Volume One

Of the Perfect, Stone-Hard Beauty of Everything

Perhaps I'm the last person on earth to discover the marvelous poems of Mary Oliver, but just in case there is one other person out there who hasn't, here's a glowing review of these two collections. Oliver has a deep understanding of nature, and deftly avoids the "plant-eaters good, meat-eaters bad" anthropomorphism of lesser voices. Her poems are populated by owls, crows, flowers, streams, herons, and snakes that go swinging through grass like old swords. But enough from me; all I can say is get these two collections and let your soul drink deeply. I'll just let Oliver speak for herself.

From New and Selected Poems: Volume One:

The Kookaburras

In every heart there is a coward and a procrastinator.
In every heart there is a god of flowers, just waiting
to come out of its cloud and lift its wings.
The kookaburras, kingfishers, pressed against the edge of
their cage, they asked me to open the door.
Years later I wake in the night and remember how I said to them,
no, and walked away.
They had the brown eyes of soft-hearted dogs.
They didn't want to do anything so extraordinary, only to fly
home to their river.
By now I suppose the great darkness has covered them.
As for myself, I am not yet the god of even the palest flowers.
Nothing else has changed either.
Someone tosses their white bones to the dung-heap.
The sun shines on the latch of their cage.
I lie in the dark, my heart pounding.

Excerpt from "Vultures"

Like large dark
lazy
butterflies they sweep over
the glades looking
for death,
to eat it,
to make it vanish,
to make of it the miracle:
resurrection. No one
knows how many
they are who daily
minister so to the grassy
miles, no one
counts how many bodies
they discover
and descend to demonstrating
each time the earth's
appetite, the unending
waterfalls of change.

At Blackwater Pond

At Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have settled
after a night of rain.
I dip my cupped hands. I drink
a long time. It tastes
like stone, leaves, fire. It falls cold
into my body, waking the bones. I hear them
deep inside me, whispering
oh, what is that beautiful thing
that just happened?

From New and Selected Poems: Volume Two:

Percy (One)

Our new dog, named for the beloved poet,
ate a book which unfortunately we had
   left unguarded.
Fortunately it was the Bhagavad Gita,
of which many copies are available.
Every day now, as Percy grows
into the beauty of his life, we touch
his wild, curly head and say,

"Oh, wisest of little dogs."

The Storm

Now through the white orchard my little dog
   romps, breaking the new snow
   with wild feet.
Running here running there, excited,
   hardly able to stop, he leaps, he spins
until the white snow is written upon
   in large, exuberant letters,
a long sentence, expressing
   the pleasures of the body in this world.

Oh, I could not have said it better
   myself.

The Poet With His Face in His Hands

You want to cry aloud for your
mistakes. But to tell the truth the world
doesn't need any more of that sound.

So if you're going to do it and can't
stop yourself, if your pretty mouth can't
hold it in, at least go by yourself across

the forty fields and the forty dark inclines
of rocks and water to the place where
the falls are flinging out their white sheets

like crazy, and there is a cave behind all that
jubilation and water-fun and you can
stand there, under it, and roar all you

want and nothing will be disturbed; you can
drip with despair all afternoon and still,
on a green branch, its wings just lightly touched

by the passing foil of the water, the thrush,
puffing out its spotted breast, will sing
of the perfect, stone-hard beauty of everything.

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