Mary Oliver: After I Fall Down the Stairs

(Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images North America)

After I Fall Down the Stairs 

                At the Golden Temple

For a while I could not remember some word

    I was in need of,

and I was bereaved and said: where are you,

    beloved friend?

                      

                          --Mary Oliver, from A Thousand Mornings

Wendell Berry: The Contrariness of the Mad Farmer

The Contrariness of the Mad Farmer

I am done with apologies. If contrariness is my

inheritance and destiny, so be it. If it is my mission
to go in at exits and come out at entrances, so be it.
I have planted by the stars in defiance of the experts,
and tilled somewhat by incantation and by singing,
and reaped, as I knew, by luck and Heaven's favor,
in spite of the best advice. If I have been caught
so often laughing at funerals, that was because
I knew the dead were already slipping away,
preparing a comeback, and can I help it?
And if at weddings I have gritted and gnashed
my teeth, it was because I knew where the bridegroom
had sunk his manhood, and knew it would not
be resurrected by a piece of cake. ‘Dance,’ they told me,
and I stood still, and while they stood
quiet in line at the gate of the Kingdom, I danced.
‘Pray,’ they said, and I laughed, covering myself
in the earth's brightnesses, and then stole off gray
into the midst of a revel, and prayed like an orphan.
When they said, ‘I know my Redeemer liveth,’
I told them, ‘He's dead.’ And when they told me
‘God is dead,’ I answered, ‘He goes fishing ever day
in the Kentucky River. I see Him often.’
When they asked me would I like to contribute
I said no, and when they had collected
more than they needed, I gave them as much as I had.
When they asked me to join them I wouldn't,
and then went off by myself and did more
than they would have asked. ‘Well, then,’ they said
‘go and organize the International Brotherhood
of Contraries,’ and I said, ‘Did you finish killing
everybody who was against peace?’ So be it.
Going against men, I have heard at times a deep harmony
thrumming in the mixture, and when they ask me what
I say I don't know. It is not the only or the easiest
way to come to the truth. It is one way.

                                          --Wendell Berry

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Sometime today a discussion between Bill Moyers and Wendell Berry is supposed to be posted on Mr. Moyers' site. I am impatiently waiting. Here is a clip of the show, wherein Mr. Berry reads the above poem.

Home: A Sorted-book Poem

Home

Paths to the heart,

the immense journey.

The way of a pilgrim,

given

the unforeseen wilderness;

the dispossessed garden;

the trail of tears

back to Cain.

The heart of man,

the hidden wound.

A world lost,

far from the madding crowd.

The way of the heart,

mountains and rivers without end.

Reaching out . . . .

Remembering:

you can’t go home again.

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For dVerse FormForAll. Sam Peralta has given us a project to complete—sorted-book or spine poetry. The idea is pretty simple: take a number of books and arrange their titles in some kind of coherent order. It’s a whole lot of fun. I’m all for any project that ends up with books scattered all over the living room. I started out with about 50 interesting titles, finally whittled it down to this. I was delighted to be able to use the last title, since today is the birthday of Thomas Wolfe (earlier today I posted a little excerpt from Wolfe). Interesting how many books I have with the word heart in the title—you’d think I was a cardiologist or something. I also have a hell of a lot of Wendell Berry titles represented. I figured that would happen.

Spider-eating Whippersnapper

A few weeks ago my 14-month-old daughter walked up to me with something in her mouth. It didn't appear to be food or a booger, so I yelled "Get that out of your mouth." She opened up her mouth and spit out a brown widow spider. No harm done, except to the spider. I think it drowned.

Thomas Wolfe: Flower of Love

Thomas Wolfe--the one from North Carolina, author of great novels such as Look Homeward, Angel and You Can't Go Home Again, not to be confused with the Tom Wolfe who wrote The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test--was born on this day, October 3, 1900. I've posted excerpts from Wolfe's work before. I consider him not only one of the great American writers of all time, but also one of the greatest poets who never published poetry. Luckily, many others have noticed how lyrical and, well, poetic, Wolfe's prose is, and I am the happy owner of a slim volume of Wolfe's words lined out as poems. Here is a taste.

O flower of love
Whose strong lips drink us downward into death,
In all things far and fleeting,
Enchantress of our twenty thousand days,
The brain will madden
And the heart be twisted, broken by her kiss,
But glory, glory, glory, she remains:
Immortal love,
Alone and aching in the wilderness,
We cried to you:
You were not absent from our loneliness.

--Thomas Wolfe, selected and arranged in verse
    by John S. Barnes in A Stone, A Leaf, A Door

Shakespeare: Food Chain

Third Fisherman: . . . Master, I marvel how the fishes live in the sea.

First Fisherman: Why, as men do a-land: the great ones eat up the little ones.

                                             --William Shakespeare, Pericles 2.1.26-28

Relics

Relics

The mountains that in ages

past were level plateaus;

the shoreline that has

not kept its place;

the bones of extinction layered

like words in a holy book,

telling the story

of what once was;

the changing sky,

a glimpse of the universe

passing, rolled together

as a scroll.

Everything

everywhere

always

never

            the same,

yesterday’s relics,

like the boarded-up shops

in any small town.

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For dVerse OpenLinkNight. Claudia's post had me thinking about culture, history, place, and this is what came out.