Blue Horses
Authors: Mary Oliver
S
ELECT
T
ITLES ALSO BY
M
ARY
O
LIV
ER
POETRY
Dog Songs
A Thousand Mornings
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
PENGUIN PRESS
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First published by The Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 2014
Copyright © 2014 by Mary Oliver
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
The following poems were first published in periodicals:
American Scholar
: “After Reading Lucretius, I Go to the Pond” (under the title “Summer Work”);
Appalachia
: “Stebbins Gulch”;
Orion
: “Blueberries”:
Parabola
: “I'm Not the River,” “I'm Feeling Fabulous, Possibly Too Much So.But I Love It”;
Portland Magazine
: “The Vulture's Wings”
LIBRARY OF
CONGRESS CATALOGING-
IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Oliver, Mary.
[Poems. Selections]
Blue horses : poems / Mary Oliver.
pages cm
ISBN: 978-0-698-17004-9
I. Title.
PS3565.L5A6 2014b 2014009724
811'.54âdc23
Version_1
For Anne Taylor
Select Titles also by Mary Oliver
AFTER READING LUCRETIUS, I GO TO THE POND
I DON'T WANT TO BE DEMURE OR RESPECTABLE
TO BE HUMAN IS TO SING YOUR OWN SONG
I'M FEELING FABULOUS, POSSIBLY TOO MUC
H SO. BUT I LOVE IT
Â
If you don't break your ropes while you're alive
do you think
ghosts will do it after?
âKABIR
The slippery green frog
that went to his death
in the heron's pink throat
was my small brother,
and the heron
with the white plumes
like a crown on his head
who is washing now his great sword-beak
in the shining pond
is my tall thin brother.
My heart dresses in black
and dances.
The television has two instruments that control it.
I get confused.
The washer asks me, do you want regular or delicate?
Honestly, I just want clean.
Everything is like that.
I won't even mention cell phones.
I can turn on the light of the lamp beside my chair
where a book is waiting, but that's about it.
Oh yes, and I can strike a match and make fire.
(for Coleman Barks)
When Rumi went into the tavern
I followed.
I heard a lot of crazy talk
and a lot of wise talk.
But the roses wouldn't grow in my hair.
When Rumi left the tavern
I followed.
I don't mean just to peek at
such a famous fellow.
Indeed he was rather ridiculous with his
long beard and his dusty feet.
But I heard less of the crazy talk and
a lot more of the wise talk and I was
hopeful enough to keep listening
until the day I found myself
transformed into an entire garden
of roses.
“Be a lotus in the pond,” she said, “opening
slowly, no single energy tugging
against another but peacefully,
all together.”
I couldn't even touch my toes.
“Feel your quadriceps stretching?” she asked.
Well, something was certainly stretching.
Standing impressively upright, she
raised one leg and placed it against
the other, then lifted her arms and
shook her hands like leaves. “Be a tree,” she said.
I lay on the floor, exhausted.
But to be a lotus in the pond
opening slowly, and very slowly risingâ
that I could do.
I don't want to be demure or respectable.
I was that way, asleep, for years.
That way, you forget too many important things.
How the little stones, even if you can't hear them, are singing.
How the river can't wait to get to the ocean and the sky, it's been there before.
What traveling is that!
It is a joy to imagine such distances.
I could skip sleep for the next hundred years.
There is a fire in the lashes of my eyes.
It doesn't matter where I am, it could be a small room.
The glimmer of gold Böhme saw on the kitchen pot was missed by everyone else in the house.
Maybe the fire in my lashes is a reflection of that.
Why do I have so many thoughts, they are driving me crazy.
Why am I always going anywhere, instead of somewhere?
Listen to me or not, it hardly matters.
I'm not trying to be wise, that would be foolish.
I'm just chattering.
by the randomness
of the way
the rocks tumbled
ages ago
the water pours
it pours
it pours
ever along the slant
of downgrade
dashing its silver thumbs
against the rocks
or pausing to carve
a sudden curled space
where the flashing fish
splash or drowse
while the kingfisher overhead
rattles and stares
and so it continues for miles
this bolt of light,
its only industry
to descend
and to be beautiful
while it does so;
as for purpose
there is none,
it is simply
one of those gorgeous things
that was made
to do what it does perfectly
and to last,
as almost nothing does,
almost forever.
No matter what the world claims,
its wisdom always growing, so it's said,
some things don't alter with time:
the first kiss is a good example,
and the flighty sweetness of rhyme.
No matter what the world preaches
spring unfolds in its appointed time,
the violets open and the roses,
snow in its hour builds its shining curves,
there's the laughter of children at play,
and the wholesome sweetness of rhyme.
No matter what the world does,
some things don't alter with time.
The first kiss, the first death.
The sorrowful sweetness of rhyme.
You might see an angel anytime
and anywhere. Of course you have
to open your eyes to a kind of
second level, but it's not really
hard. The whole business of
what's reality and what isn't has
never been solved and probably
never will be. So I don't care to
be too definite about anything.
I have a lot of edges called Perhaps
and almost nothing you can call
Certainty. For myself, but not
for other people. That's a place
you just can't get into, not
entirely anyway, other people's
heads.
I'll just leave you with this.
I don't care how many angels can
dance on the head of a pin. It's
enough to know that for some people
they exist, and that they dance.
In a poem
people want
something fancy,
but even more
they want something
inexplicable
made plain,
easy to swallowâ
not unlike a suddenly
harmonic passage
in an otherwise
difficult and sometimes dissonant
symphonyâ
even if it is only
for the moment
of hearing it.
I would want a boat, if I wanted a
boat, that bounded hard on the waves,
that didn't know starboard from port
and wouldn't learn, that welcomed
dolphins and headed straight for the
whales, that, when rocks were close,
would slide in for a touch or two,
that wouldn't keep land in sight and
went fast, that leaped into the spray.
What kind of life is it always to plan
and do, to promise and finish, to wish
for the near and the safe? Yes, by the
heavens, if I wanted a boat I would want
a boat I couldn't steer.
