Read Blue Horses Online

Authors: Mary Oliver

Blue Horses

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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A Penguin Random House Company

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'.54—dc23

Version_1

For Anne Taylor

 

If you don't break your ropes while you're alive

do you think

ghosts will do it after?

—KABIR

AFTER READING LUCRETIUS, I GO TO THE POND

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.

WHAT I CAN DO

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.

RUMI
(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.

FIRST YOGA LESSON

“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 rising—

that I could do.

I DON'T WANT TO BE DEMURE OR RESPECTABLE

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.

STEBBIN'S GULCH

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

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.

ANGELS

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.

WHAT WE WANT

In a poem

people want

something fancy,

but even more

they want something

inexplicable

made plain,

easy to swallow—

not unlike a suddenly

harmonic passage

in an otherwise

difficult and sometimes dissonant

symphony—

even if it is only

for the moment

of hearing it.

IF I WANTED A BOAT

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.

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