Poetry

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, cheerfully enough,
This and every crisping day,
Though the sun be swinging east,
And the ponds be cold and black,
And the sweets of the year be doomed.

By Mary Oliver

This is the time to be slow,
Lie low to the wall
Until the bitter weather passes.

Try, as best as you can, not to let
The wire brush of doubt
Scrape from your heart
All sense of yourself
And your hesitant light.

If you remain generous,
Time will come good;
And you will find your feet
Again on fresh pastures of promise,
Where the air will be kind
And blushed with beginning.

By John O'Donohue

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is travelled by dark feet and dark wings.

By Wendell Berry