A little bit of Culture...  Poetry from soc.culture.irish

Poetry Worldwide  (all else....)

Posted by Hockersmith
on:    15 October 1999

Thought of you new-fangled Americans...when I read this. :)

Wild Geese
Mary Oliver

Dream Work
New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1994

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.


--- The End ---

Questions? Comments? -K. E. Dennis

Poetry Worldwide  (all else....)

A little bit of Culture - Baile | Home