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2 posts tagged The Journey
I’m going to post the link to the interview in O Magazine with Mary Oliver because I really think you should read it. (And you should read her poetry.) I think the interview is pretty interesting, but I also just wanted to say how glad I am that Rebecca posted “The Journey” because it’s one of my very favorite poems. Oliver’s Dream Work came into my life at a tumultuous time and it has always been a book I come back to again and again. My copy is worn to a thread because it’s been packed around, dropped, and read repeatedly. Other poems that are in that collection that I love are “Dogfish,” “Wild Geese,” “Black Snakes,”and “Coming Home.” Check out Mary Oliver. Her poems will bring some peace into your life.
-S
The Journey
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.
—Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver is a notoriously private poet, which is reflected in her often-upbeat poetry. She said of “The Journey” in an O Magazine interview with Maria Schriver: “I’m shocked to see that I wrote that. Because I was always very private about my life, and yet the poems in Dream Work [1986] are not so private as I thought.” I, for one, am so thankful this poem came out of her despite herself, despite her privacy.
If ever you are hurting, read this poem. Save “the only life you could save.” Save yourself.
-R
