Postby indy » Sat Dec 19, 2009 6:31 pm
Some of my favorite Oliver lines are these from the beginning of "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.
Just now as I was typing this and wondering if I should include the rest of the poem, a flock of wild geese flew by overhead, honking, on their way to somewhere before the snow comes in . Okay, whole poem it is:
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.
"Walker, there is no road, only wind-trails in the sea." Antonio Machado, translated by Robert Bly