Friday, September 23, 2011

Equinox: Growing Darkness


Two more seasonal favorites
from Philadelphia cartoonist Tony Auth


Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness

Every year we have been
witness to it: how the
world descends

into a rich mash, in order that
it may resume.
And therefore
who would cry out

to the petals on the ground
to stay,
knowing, as we must,
how the vivacity of what was is married

to the vitality of what will be?
I don’t say
it’s easy, but
what else will do

if the love one claims to have for the world
be true?
So let us go on

though the sun be swinging east,
and the ponds be cold and black,
and the sweets of the year be doomed.


by Mary Oliver (b 1935)
Contemporary American Poet
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, 1984
Most recently: Swan: Poems and Prose Poems, 2010

this poem found in The New York Times, 5 November 2010

2 comments:

  1. My friend Jacquie posted another wonderful poem by Mary Oliver:

    A Dream of Trees

    There is a thing in me that dreamed of trees,
    A quiet house, some green and modest acres
    A little way from every troubling town,
    A little way from factories, schools, laments.
    I would have time, I thought, and time to spare,
    With only streams and birds for company,
    To build out of my life a few wild stanzas.
    And then it came to me, that so was death,
    A little way away from everywhere.

    There is a thing in me still dreams of trees.
    But let it go. Homesick for moderation,
    Half the world's artists shrink or fall away.
    If any find solution, let him tell it.
    Meanwhile I bend my heart toward lamentation
    Where, as the times implore our true involvement,
    The blades of every crisis point the way.

    I would it were not so, but so it is.
    Who ever made music of a mild day?

    ––Mary Oliver

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  2. Rest in Peace Tony Auth (1942 - 2014) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Auth

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