one or two things
August 11th, 2006 by herichon
[Note: I needed to link to this poem for someone, and I couldn’t find the full text of it anywhere online, so I have retyped and posted it from my own copy of New and Selected Poems. It is certainly under copyright and it may be that Ms. Oliver really does not want it posted online anywhere, and perhaps she will contact me and ask me to remove it, which I certainly will do, but in the meantime I will leave it here in the hopes that it might bring a little spark of insight and beauty into someone else’s life, which after all is to a large degree what poetry is for. If you like this, perhaps you’ll want to explore Mary Oliver’s poetry for yourself.]
One or Two Things
by Mary Oliver
1.
Don’t bother me.
I’ve just
been born.
2.
The butterfly’s loping flight
carries it through the country of the leaves
delicately, and well enough to get it
where it wants to go, wherever that is, stopping
here and there to fuzzle the damp throats
of flowers and the black mud; up
and down it swings, frenzied and aimless; and sometimes
for long delicious moments it is perfectly
lazy, riding motionless in the breeze on the soft stalk
of some ordinary flower.
3.
The god of dirt
came up to me many times and said
so many wise and delectable things, I lay
on the grass listening
to his dog voice,
crow voice,
frog voice; now,
he said, and now,
and never once mentioned forever,
4.
which has nevertheless always been,
like a sharp iron hoof,
at the center of my mind.
5.
One or two things are all you need
to travel over the blue pond, over the deep
roughage of the trees and through the stiff
flowers of lightning—some deep
memory of pleasure, some cutting
knowledge of pain.
6.
But to lift the hoof!
For that you need
an idea.
7.
For years and years I struggled
just to love my life. And then
the butterfly
rose, weightless, in the wind.
“Don’t love your life
too much,” it said,
and vanished
into the world.