OTHER BOOKS BY MARY OLIVER

POETRY
No Voyage and Other Poems
The River Styx, Ohio, and Other Poems
Twelve Moons
American Primitive
Dream Work
House of Light
New and Selected Poems Volume One
White Pine
West Wind
The Leaf and the Cloud
What Do We Know
Owls and Other Fantasies
Why I Wake Early
Blue Iris
New and Selected Poems Volume Two
Thirst
Red Bird
The Truro Bear and Other Poems
Evidence

PROSE
A Poetry Handbook
Blue Pastures
Rules for the Dance
Winter Hours
Long Life
Our World (with photographs by Molly Malone Cook)

AUDIO
At Blackwater Pond
Many Miles
For Anne Taylor
 CONTENTS
What Can I Say
Of Time
On the Beach
How Perfectly
How I Go to the Woods
A Fox in the Dark
Just Around the House, Early in the Morning
Tom Dancer’s Gift of a Whitebark Pine Cone
Passing the Unworked Field
For Example
Percy Wakes Me (Fourteen)
Today
Swan
Beans Green and Yellow
It Is Early
How Many Days
More of the Un nishable Fox Story
The Riders
The Poet Dreams of the Classroom
Dancing in Mexico
The Sweetness of Dogs (Fifteen)
Bird in the Pepper Tree
In Provincetown, and Ohio, and Alabama
April
Torn
 Wind in the Pines
The Living Together
We Cannot Know
The Poet Dreams of the Mountain
Mist in the Morning, Nothing Around Me but Sand and
Roses
The Last Word About Fox (Maybe)
How Heron Comes
When
Trees
In Your Hands
I Own a House
I Worried
Lark Ascending
Don’t Hesitate
In the Darkness
Four Sonnets
Trying to Be Thoughtful in the First Brights of Dawn
More Evidence
Whispered Poem
The Poet Is Told to Fill Up More Pages

AFTERWORD
Percy
Everyone once, once only. Just once and no more.
And we also once. Never again. But this having been
once, although only once, to have been of the earth,
seems irrevocable.
—Rilke, Duino Elegies
’Tis curious that we only believe as deep as we live.
—Emerson, Beauty
 What Can I Say
What can I say that I have not said before?
So I’ll say it again.
The leaf has a song in it.
Stone is the face of patience.
Inside the river there is an un nishable story
and you are somewhere in it
and it will never end until all ends.

Take your busy heart to the art museum and the

chamber of commerce
but take it also to the forest.
The song you heard singing in the leaf when you
were a child
is singing still.
I am of years lived, so far, seventy-four,
and the leaf is singing still.
 Of Time
Don’t even ask how rapidly the hummingbird
lives his life.
You can’t imagine. A thousand owers a day,
a little sleep, then the same again, then
he vanishes.
I adore him.

Yet I adore also the drowse of mountains.

And in the human world, what is time?

In my mind there is Rumi, dancing.
There is Li Po drinking from the winter stream.
There is Ha z strolling through Shariz, his feet
loving the dust.
 On the Beach
On the beach, at dawn:
four small stones clearly
hugging each other.

How many kinds of love

might there be in the world,
and how many formations might they make

and who am I ever

to imagine I could know
such a marvelous business?

When the sun broke

it poured willingly its light
over the stones

that did not move, not at all,

just as, to its always generous term,
it shed its light on me,

my own body that loves,

equally, to hug another body.
 How Perfectly
How perfectly
and neatly
opens the pink rose

this bright morning,

the sun warm
on my shoulders,

its heat
on the opening petals.
Possibly

it is the smallest,
the least important event
at this moment

in the whole world.

Yet I stand there,
utterly happy.
 How I Go to the Woods
Ordinarily I go to the woods alone, with not a single
friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and
therefore
unsuitable.

I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the

catbirds
or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of
praying, as you no doubt have yours.

Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. I

can sit
on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of
weeds,
until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the
almost
unhearable sound of the roses singing.

If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must

love
you very much.
 A Fox in the Dark
A fox goes by
in the headlights
like an electric shock.

Then he pauses
at the edge of the road
and the heart, if it is still alive,

feels something—
a yearning
for which we have no name

but which we may remember,

years later,
in the darkness,

upon some other empty road.

Just Around the House, Early in the Morning
Though I have been scorned for it,
let me never be afraid to use the word beautiful.
For within is the shining leaf
and the blossoms of the geranium at the window.
And the eyes of the happy puppy as he wakes.
The colors of the old and beloved afghan lying
by itself, on the couch, in the morning sun.
The hummingbird’s nest perched now in a
corner of the bookshelf, in front of so many
books of so many colors.
The two poached eggs. The buttered toast.
The ream of brand-new paper just opened,
white as a block of snow.
The typewriter humming, ready to go.
Tom Dancer’s Gift of a Whitebark Pine Cone
You never know
what opportunity
is going to travel to you,
or through you.

Once a friend gave me

a small pine cone—
one of a few
he found in the scat

of a grizzly
in Utah maybe,
or Wyoming.
I took it home

and did what I supposed

he was sure I would do—
I ate it,
thinking

how it had traveled

through that rough
and holy body.
It was crisp and sweet.

It was almost a prayer

without words.
My gratitude
to you, Tom Dancer,
for this gift of the world
I adore so much
and want to belong to.
And thank you too, great bear.
 Passing the Unworked Field

Queen Anne’s lace

is hardly
prized but
all the same it isn’t
idle look
how it
stands straight on its
thin stems how it
scrubs its white faces
with the
rags of the sun how it
makes all the
loveliness
it can.
 For Example
Okay, the broken gull let me lift it
from the sand.
Let me fumble it into a box, with the
lid open.
Okay, I put the box into my car and started
up the highway
to the place where sometimes, sometimes not,
such things can be mended.

The gull at rst was quiet.

How everything turns out one way or another, I
won’t call it good or bad, just
one way or another.
Then the gull lurched from the box and onto
the back of the front seat and
punched me.
Okay, a little blood slid down.

But we all know, don’t we, how sometimes

things have to feel anger, so as not
to be defeated?

I love this world, even in its hard places.

A bird too must love this world,
even in its hard places.
So, even if the e ort may come to nothing,
you have to do something.
It was, generally speaking, a perfectly beautiful
summer morning.
The gull beat the air with its good wing.
I kept my eyes on the road.
 Percy Wakes Me (Fourteen)
Percy wakes me and I am not ready.
He has slept all night under the covers.
Now he’s eager for action: a walk, then breakfast.
So I hasten up. He is sitting on the kitchen counter
where he is not supposed to be.
How wonderful you are, I say. How clever, if you
needed me,
to wake me.
He thought he would hear a lecture and deeply
his eyes begin to shine.
He tumbles onto the couch for more compliments.
He squirms and squeals; he has done something
that he needed
and now he hears that it is okay.
I scratch his ears, I turn him over
and touch him everywhere. He is
wild with the okayness of it. Then we walk, then
he has breakfast, and he is happy.
This is a poem about Percy.
This is a poem about more than Percy.
Think about it.
 Today
Today is a day of
dark clouds and slow rain.
The little blades of corn
are so happy.
 Swan
Did you too see it, drifting, all night on the black
river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery
air,
an armful of white blossoms,
a perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings: a snowbank, a bank of
lilies,
biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, uting and whistling
a shrill dark music, like the rain pelting the trees,
like a waterfall
kni ng down the black ledges?
And did you see it, nally, just under the clouds—
a white cross streaming across the sky, its feet
like black leaves, its wings like the stretching light
of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained
to everything?
And have you too nally gured out what beauty is
for?
And have you changed your life?
 Beans Green and Yellow
In fall
it is mushrooms
gathered from dampness
under the pines;
in spring
I have known
the taste of the lamb
full of milk
and spring grass;
today
it is beans green and yellow
and lettuce and basil
from my friends’ garden—
how calmly,
as though it were an ordinary thing,
we eat the blessed earth.
 It Is Early
It is early, still the darkest of the dark.
And already I have killed (in exasperation)
two mosquitoes and (inadvertently)
one spider.

All the same, the sun will rise

in its sweeps of pink and red clouds.
Not for me does it rise and not in haste does it rise
but step by step, neither
with exasperation nor inadvertently, and not with
any intended attention to
any one thing, but to all, like a god

that takes its instructions from another, even

greater,
whose name, even, we do not know. The one

that made the mosquito, and the spider; the one

that made me as I am: easy to exasperation, then
penitent.
 How Many Days
How many days I lived and had never used
the holy words.
Tenderly I began them when it came to me
to want to, oh mystery irrefutable!
Then I went out of that place
and into a eld and lay down
among the weeds and the grasses,
whispering to them, fast, in order to keep
that world also.
 More of the Un nishable Fox Story
And what did the fox look like?

Like some prince in a fairy tale,

in his secret costume.

What was he looking for?

For a rabbit to fall out of the stars

and into the grass.

Was he combed and curly, did he

wear a prince’s crown?

No, he was rough and smelled of skunk.

But he was beautiful,

and beauty is not to be taken lightly.

Did you stop the car?

No, I kept on going to wherever it was I was going,

which I don’t remember.

Well, what do you remember?

The fox! the fox!

 The Riders
When the Pony Express needed
riders, it advertised
a preference for orphans—
that way, no one was likely
to ask questions when the carriers failed
to arrive, or the frightened ponies
stumbled in with their dead
from the anks of the prairies.
This detail from our country’s past
has no particular signi cance—it is only
a footnote. There were plenty
of orphans and the point of course
was to get the mail through, so the theory
was sound. And besides,
think of those rough, lean boys—
how light and hard they would ride

eeing the great loneliness.

 The Poet Dreams of the Classroom
I dreamed
I stood up in class
and I said aloud:

Teacher,
why is algebra important?

Sit down, he said.

Then I dreamed
I stood up
and I said:

Teacher, I’m weary of the turkeys

that we have to draw every fall.
May I draw a fox instead?

Sit down, he said.

Then I dreamed
I stood up once more and said:

Teacher,
my heart is falling asleep
and it wants to wake up.
It needs to be outside.
Sit down, he said.
 Dancing in Mexico
Not myself,
but Maria,
who, when her work is done,
tunes in the radio,
goes out into the garden,
picks up the front feet of the little dog Ricky,
and dances. She dances.
 The Sweetness of Dogs (Fifteen)
What do you say, Percy? I am thinking
of sitting out on the sand to watch
the moon rise. Full tonight.
So we go

and the moon rises, so beautiful it

makes me shudder, makes me think about
time and space, makes me take
measure of myself: one iota
pondering heaven. Thus we sit,

I thinking how grateful I am for the moon’s

perfect beauty and also, oh! how rich
it is to love the world. Percy, meanwhile,
leans against me and gazes up into
my face. As though I were
his perfect moon.
 Bird in the Pepper Tree
Don’t mind my inexplicable delight
in knowing your name,
little Wilson’s Warbler
yellow as a lemon, with a smooth, black cap.

Just do what you do and don’t worry, dipping

branch by branch down to the fountain
to sip neatly, then utter away.

A name
is not a leash.
In Provincetown, and Ohio, and Alabama
Death taps his black wand and something vanishes.
Summer,
winter; the thickest branch of an oak tree for which I
have a
special love; three just hatched geese. Many trees
and thickets of
catbrier as bulldozers widen the bicycle path. The
violets down
by the old creek, the ow itself now raveling
forward through
an underground tunnel.

Lambs that, only recently, were gamboling in the

eld. An old
mule, in Alabama, that could take no more of
anything. And
then, what follows? Then spring again, summer, and
the season
of harvest. More catbrier, almost instantly rising.
(No violets,
ever, or song of the old creek.) More lambs and new
green grass
in the eld, for their happiness until. And some kind
of yellow
ower whose name I don’t know (but what does that
matter?)
rising around and out of the half-buried, half-
vulture-eaten,
harness-galled, open-mouthed (its teeth long and
blackened),
breathless, holy mule.
 April
I wanted to speak at length about
the happiness of my body and the
delight of my mind for it was
April, night, a
full moon and—

but something in myself or maybe

from somewhere other said: not too
many words, please, in the
muddy shallows the

frogs are singing.

 Torn
I tore the web
of a black and yellow spider
in the brash of weeds

and down she came

on her surplus of legs

each of which
touched me and really
the touch wasn’t much
but then the way

if a spider can
she looked at me
clearly somewhere between

outraged and heartbroken

made me say “I’m sorry

to have wrecked your home

your nest your larder”
to which she said nothing
only for an instant

pouched on my wrist
then swung herself o

on the thinnest of strings

back into the world.
This pretty, this perilous world.
 Wind in the Pines
Is it true that the wind
streaming especially in fall
through the pines
is saying nothing, nothing at all,

or is it just that I don’t yet know the language?

 The Living Together
The spirit says:
What gorgeous clouds.
The body says: Good,
the crops need rain.

The spirit says:

Look at the lambs frolicking.
The body says:
When’s the feast?

The spirit says:

What is the lark singing about?
The body says:
Maybe it’s angry.

The spirit says:

I think shadows are trying to say something.
The body says:
I know how to make light.

The spirit says:

My heart is pounding.
The body says:
Take o your clothes.

The spirit says: Body,

how can we live together?
The body says: Bricks and mortar
and a back door.
 We Cannot Know
Now comes Schumann down the scale.
What a river
of pleasure!

Where is his riven heart?

His ruined mind?
Lying in wait.

Now comes Schumann up the scale

and around the curly corners
of just a few absolutely right notes

while the Rhine turges along,

while the Rhine sparkles in the dark,
lying in wait.
 The Poet Dreams of the Mountain
Sometimes I grow weary of the days, with all their
ts and starts.
I want to climb some old gray mountain, slowly,
taking
the rest of my lifetime to do it, resting often,
sleeping
under the pines or, above them, on the unclothed
rocks.
I want to see how many stars are still in the sky
that we have smothered for years now, a century at
least.
I want to look back at everything, forgiving it all,
and peaceful, knowing the last thing there is to
know.
All that urgency! Not what the earth is about!
How silent the trees, their poetry being of
themselves only.
I want to take slow steps, and think appropriate
thoughts.
In ten thousand years, maybe, a piece of the
mountain will fall.
Mist in the Morning, Nothing Around Me
but Sand and Roses
Was I lost? No question.
Did I know where I was? Not at all.
Had I ever been happier in my life? Never.
 The Last Word About Fox (Maybe)
Where is the fox now?

Somewhere, doing his life’s work, which is

living his life.

How many more foxes has he made for the earth?

Many, many.

How many rabbits has he caught so far?

Many, many, many.

This doesn’t sound very important.

What’s of importance? Scalping mountains

or shing for oil?

I would argue about that.

Ah, you have never heard of the meek and what is

to become of them?

What’s meek about eating rabbits?

It’s better than what’s happening to the

mountains and the ocean.
You know, there’s only one thing to say. I think
you’re a little crazy.

I thank the Lord.

 How Heron Comes
It is a negligence of the mind
not to notice how at dusk
heron comes to the pond and
stands there in his death robes, perfect
servant of the system, hungry, his eyes
full of attention, his wings
pure light.
 When
When it’s over, it’s over, and we don’t know
any of us, what happens then.
So I try not to miss anything.
I think, in my whole life, I have never missed
the full moon
or the slipper of its coming back.
Or, a kiss.
Well, yes, especially a kiss.
 Trees
Heaven knows how many
trees I climbed when my body
was still in the climbing way, how

many afternoons, especially

windy ones, I sat
perched on a limb that

rose and fell with every invisible

blow. Each tree was
a green ship in the wind-waves, every

branch a mast, every leafy height

a happiness that came without
even trying. I was that alive

and limber. Now I walk under them—

cool, beloved: the household
of such tall, kind sisters.
 In Your Hands
The dog, the donkey, surely they know
they are alive.
Who would argue otherwise?

But now, after years of consideration,

I am getting beyond that.
What about the sun owers? What about
the tulips, and the pines?

Listen, all you have to do is start and

there’ll be no stopping.
What about mountains? What about water
slipping over the rocks?

And, speaking of stones, what about

the little ones you can
hold in your hands, their heartbeats
so secret, so hidden it may take years

before, nally, you hear them?

 I Own a House
I own a house, small but comfortable. In it is a bed,
a desk,
a kitchen, a closet, a telephone. And so forth—you
know
how it is: things collect.

Outside the summer clouds are drifting by, all of

them
with vague and beautiful faces. And there are the
pines
that bush out spicy and ambitious, although they do
not
even know their names. And there is the
mockingbird;
over and over he rises from his thorn-tree and
dances—he
actually dances, in the air. And there are days I wish
I
owned nothing, like the grass.
 I Worried
I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
ow in the right direction, will the earth turn
as it was taught, and if not, how shall
I correct it?

Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,

can I do better?

Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows

can do it and I am, well,
hopeless.

Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,

am I going to get rheumatism,
lockjaw, dementia?

Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.

And gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.
 Lark Ascending
galloped up into the morning air
then oated
a long way

whispering, I imagine,
to the same mystery
I try to speak to
down here.

And look, he is carrying something—

a little letter just light enough
for him to hold

in his yellow beak!

Look now, he is placing it

inside a cloud

and singing at the same time

joyfully, and yet
as if his heart would break.

Later, I take my weightier

but not unhappy body
into the house
 I busy myself
(bury myself)

in books. But
all the while I am thinking
of the gift
of my seventy-some years

and how I would also if I could

carry a message of thanks
to the doors of the clouds.

I don’t know whether it would be

of the heart or the mind. I know
it’s the poem I have yet to make.
 Don’t Hesitate
If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,
don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty
of lives and whole towns destroyed or about
to be. We are not wise, and not very often
kind. And much can never be redeemed.
Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this
is its way of ghting back, that sometimes
something happens better than all the riches
or power in the world. It could be anything,
but very likely you notice it in the instant
when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the
case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid
of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.
 In the Darkness
At night the stars
throw down
their postcards of light.

Who are they

that love me
so much?

Strangers
in the darkness—
imagine!

they have seen me

and they burn
as I too

have burned, but in

the mortal way, to which
I am totally loyal.

Still, I am grateful
and faithful
to this other romance

though we will not ever know

each others’ names,
we will not ever

touch.
 Four Sonnets

1.

There appeared a darkly sparkling thing

hardly
bigger than a pin, that all afternoon
seemed
to want my company. It did me no hurt but
wandered
my shirt, my sleeve-cu , my wrist.
Finally it opened its sheets of chitin and
ew away.
Linnaeus probably had given it a name, which I
didn’t know. All I could say was: Look
what’s come from its home of dirt and dust
and du , its
cinch of instinct. What does music, I wondered,
mean to it?
What the distant horizons? Still, no doubt have I
that it has some purpose, as we all have
some purpose which, though none of us
knows what it is, we each go on claiming.
Oh, distant relative, we will never speak to
each other
a single kind word. And yet, in this world, it is
no small thing to sparkle.
 2.

The king sher hurrahs from a branch

above the river.
Under its feet is a sh that will swim
no more,
that also has its story, for another time
perhaps.
Now it’s the bird’s, pounding the sh then
hulking it down its open beak,
glad in its winning and not at all trammeled
by thought.
I keep trying to put this poem together.
Meanwhile
the bird is again gazing into the glaze
of this running food-bin. Thought does not
create the soul, not entirely, but it
plays its part.
Meanwhile the bird is ashy body and the sh
was ashy body and each
ful lls what it is, remembers little
and imagines less.
And thus the day passes into darkness
undamaged.
The sh, slippery and delicious.
The king sher, so quick, so blue.

3.

The authors of history are among us still.

And believe me they believe what they believe
as sincerely as the millions who are simply
looking for a life, a purpose.
Who are the good people? We are all good people
except when we are not. Meanwhile the forests
are felled, the oceans rise, storms
give o the appearance of anger. Who
despises us and for what reasons? Whom do we
despise and for what reasons? Once there was a
garden
and we were sent forth from it, possibly forever.
Possibly not, possibly there is no forever.
“What’s on your mind?” we say to each other.
As though it’s some kind of weight.

4.

This morning what I am thinking of is circles:

the sun, the earth, the moon;
the life of each of us that begins then returns
to our home, the circular world,
even as in our cleverness we have invented
invention—the straight line
nothing like a leaf, or a lake or the moon
but simply, perilously
getting by on our wits from here to there.
Einstein chalks slowly across the blackboard,
erases, writes again. Mozart ings
his uttering notes onto the rigid sta .
The drones y straight to any target. This morning
what I am thinking about is circles
and the straight lines that rule us
while earth abides in all sorts of splendors,
knowing its limitations. The light
of every morning curls forth,
oh beautifully, then circles toward the dark.
Obama works, prays, then grabs his scrim of sleep.
Trying to Be Thoughtful in the First Brights
of Dawn
I am thinking, or trying to think, about all the
imponderables for which we have
no answers, yet endless interest all the
range of our lives, and it’s

good for the head no doubt to undertake such

meditation; Mystery, after all,
is God’s other name, and deserves our

considerations surely. But, but—

excuse me now, please; it’s morning, heavenly
bright,
and my irrepressible heart begs me to hurry on
into the next exquisite moment.
 More Evidence

1.

The grosbeak sings with a completely cherishable

roughness.

The yellow and orange and scarlet trees—what do

they denote but willingness, and the amboyance
of change?

With what words can I convince you of the

casualness with which the white swans y?

It doesn’t matter to me if the woodchuck and

the turtle are not always, and thoughtfully,
considering their lives and making decisions,
the certainty that they are doing this at all—
that alters everything.

Do you give a thought now and again to the

essential sparrow, the necessary toad?

Just as truly as the earth is ours, we belong

to it. The tissue of our minds is made of it,
and the soles of our feet, as fully as the
tiger’s claw, the branch of the whitebark pine,
the voices of the birds, the dog-tooth violet
and the tooth of the dog.

Have you ever seen a squirrel swim? I have.

Is it not incredible, that in the acorn something

has hidden an entire tree?

“For there is nothing that grows or lives that

can approach the feathery grace, the symmetry
of form, or the lacy elegance of pattern of the
Ferns: and to be blind to all this beauty is
nothing less than calamitous.”

In Australia there is a cloud called The

Morning Glory.

Okay, I confess to wanting to make a literature

of praise.

2.

Where are you when you’re not thinking?

Frightening, isn’t it?
Where are you when you’re not feeling anything?
Oh, worse!
Except for faith and imagination, nature is that
hard fortress you can’t get out of.

Some persons are captive to love, others would

make the beloved a captive. Which one are you?

I think I have not lived a single hour of my life

by calculation.

There are in this world a lot of devils with wondrous

smiles. Also, many unruly angels.

The life of the body is, I suppose, along with

everything else, a lesson. I mean, if lessons are
what you look for.

Faith: this is the engine of my head, my breast

bone, my toes.

3.

It is salvation if one can step forth from the

clutter of one’s mind into that open space—
that almost holy space—called work.

Emerson: how the elegance of his language can

make me weep over my own inadequacy.
Music: what so many sentences aspire to be.

Or, how sweet just to say of a great, burly

man: he’s a honey.

Or of the fox: his neat trot. The donkey, his

sorrowful plodding. The cheetah: his clean leap.
The alligator: his lunge.

Do you hear the rustle and outcry on the page?

Do you hear its longing?

Words are too wonderful for words. The vibrant

translation of things to ideas. Hello there.
My best greetings to you.

Lord, there are so many res, so many words, in

my heart. It’s going to take something I can’t
even imagine, to put them all out.

4.

Let laughter come to you now and again, that

sturdy friend.

The impulse to leap o the cli , when the

body falsely imagines it might y, may be
restrained by reason, also by modesty. Of the
two possibilities, take your choice, and live.
Refuse all cooperation with the heart’s death.

5.

Sing, if you can sing, and if not still be

musical inside yourself.
 Whispered Poem
I have been risky in my endeavors,
I have been steadfast in my loves;

Oh Lord, consider these when you judge me.

The Poet Is Told to Fill Up More Pages
But, where are the words?
Not in my pocket.
Not in the refrigerator.
Not in my savings account.

So I sit, harassed, with my notebook.

It’s a joke, really, and not a good one.
For fun I try a few commands myself.
I say to the rain, stop raining.
I say to the sun, that isn’t anywhere nearby,
Come back, and come fast.

Nothing happens.

So this is all I can give you,

not being the maker of what I do,
but only the one that holds the pencil.

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.
Make of it what you will.
AFTERWORD
 Percy
(2002–2009)

This—I said to Percy when I had left

our bed and gone
out onto the living room couch where
he found me apparently doing nothing—this
is called thinking.
It’s something people do,
not being entirely children of the earth,
like a dog or a tree or a ower.

His eyes questioned such an activity.

Well, okay, he said. If you say so. Whatever
it is. Actually
I like kissing better.

And next to me,

tucked down his curly head
and, sweet as a ower, slept.
 NOTES
The Rilke epigraph is from the Ninth Elegy,
translation by C. F. MacIntyre.

The last line of the poem titled “Swan”

remembers the nal sentence of Rilke’s
poem “Archaic Torso of Apollo” as translated
by Robert Bly: “You must change your life.”

The quotation in “More Evidence (1)” is by

Herbert Durand, from The Field Book of
Common Ferns (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1928).

Page 45, the author acknowledges Gerard Manley

Hopkins’ poem “Hurrahing in Harvest.”
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks to the editors of the following magazines in which
some of the poems, sometimes in slightly di erent form, have
previously appeared.

Appalachia: “A Fox in the Dark,” “More of the Un nishable

Fox Story,” “The Last Word About Fox (Maybe),” “Trees”
Bark: “Percy Wakes Me,” “The Sweetness of Dogs,” “Percy”
Michigan Quarterly: “Swan”
Onearth: “Beans Green and Yellow”
Orion: “How Heron Comes”
Parabola: “Passing the Unworked Field,” “April,” “Mist in the
Morning, Nothing Around Me but Sand and Roses,” “When,” “In
Your Hands”
Shenandoah: “Just Around the House, Early in the Morning,” “Tom
Dancer’s Gift of a Whitebark Pine Cone,” “The Poet Dreams of the
Mountain,” “Trying to Be Thoughtful in the First Brights of Dawn”
 Beacon Press
25 Beacon Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02108-2892
www.beacon.org

Beacon Press books

are published under the auspices of
the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.

© 2010 by Mary Oliver

All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America

14 13 12 11 10 87654321

This book is printed on acid-free paper that meets the

uncoated paper ANSI/NISO speci cations for permanence
as revised in 1992.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Oliver, Mary,
Swan : poems and prose poems / Mary Oliver.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-8070-6899-1 (alk. paper)
E-ISBN 978-0-8070-6901-1
I. Title.
PS3565.L5S93 2010
811’.54—dc22 2010009191