Tuesday, March 23, 2010

A poem about geese

Wild Geese
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.
© Mary Oliver

There are a few things about this poem that I really, really like. That are resonant. I love some of the very first lines, "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." I love the image of relenting and letting "the soft animal of your body love what it loves." Usually in the body/mind divide, the body is branded as this raw, primitive, barbaric thing mastered by the brain only through constant grappling. I love the idea that your body is this separate, gentle being that only desires to love. I also like "the clear pebbles of rain." When the verse finds its way to the geese, it ends up losing me - I am anti-goose for my own petty reasons.

No comments:

Post a Comment