Adam Zagajewski

Try to Praise the Mutilated World

Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June's long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You've seen the refugees heading nowhere,
you've heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth's scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the grey feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.

Translated by Renata Gorczynski

Mary Oliver

Bone

1.

Understand, I am always trying to figure out
what the soul is,
and where hidden,
and what shape –

and so, last week,
when I found on the beach
the ear bone
of a pilot whale that may have died

hundreds of years ago, I thought
maybe I was close
to discovering something –
for the ear bone

2.

is the portion that lasts longest
in any of us, man or whale; shaped
like a squat spoon
with a pink scoop where

once, in the lively swimmer’s head,
it joined its two sisters
in the house of hearing,
it was only

two inches long –
and thought: the soul
might be like this –
so hard, so necessary –

3.

yet almost nothing.
Beside me
the gray sea
was opening and shutting its wave-doors,

unfolding over and over
its time-ridiculing roar;
I looked but I couldn’t see anything
through its dark-knit glare;

yet don’t we all know, the golden sand
is there at the bottom,
though our eyes have never seen it,
nor can our hands ever catch it

4.

lest we would sift it down
into fractions, and facts –
certainties –
and what the soul is, also

I believe I will never quite know.
Though I play at the edges of knowing,
truly I know
our part is not knowing,

but looking, and touching, and loving,
which is the way I walked on,
softly,
through the pale-pink morning light.

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.

Yellow

There is the heaven we enter
through institutional grace
and there are the yellow finches bathing and singing
in the lowly puddle.

Robert Bly

Things to Think

Think in ways you've never thought before.
If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message
Larger than anything you've ever heard,
Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.

Think that someone may bring a bear to your door,
Maybe wounded and deranged; or think that a moose
Has risen out of the lake, and he's carrying on his antlers
A child of your own whom you've never seen.

When someone knocks on the door,
Think that he's about
To give you something large: tell you you're forgiven,
Or that it's not necessary to work all the time,
Or that it's been decided that if you lie down no one will die.

W.S. Merwin

Separation

Your absence has gone through me

Like thread through a needle.

Everything I do is stitched with its color

Thanks

Listen

with the night falling we are saying thank you

we are stopping on the bridges to bow for the railings

we are running out of the glass rooms

with our mouths full of food to look at the sky

and say thank you

we are standing by the water looking out

in different directions.

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging

after funerals we are saying thank you

after the news of the dead

whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

looking up from tables we are saying thank you

in a culture up to its chin in shame

living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you

in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators

remembering wars and the police at the back door

and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you

in the banks that use us we are saying thank you

with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable

unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us

our lost feelings we are saying thank you

with the forests falling faster than the minutes

of our lives we are saying thank you

with the words going out like cells of a brain

with the cities growing over us like the earth

we are saying thank you faster and faster

with nobody listening we are saying thank you

we are saying thank you and waving

dark though it is

Poetry Anthology

I am planning on using my blog as a way to keep track of all the poems that I love and go to frequently. I always end up spending hours paging through numerous journals where i have poems scrawled out, missing punctuation, and interrupted line breaks.
Now: it's all here.
Enjoy reading these gems as I continue to post!

How She Loves

My roommate Lauren and I were talking the other night about how we both theoretically know that God is greater than any gender confinement but how it still sounds strange to refer to God as "she." Through the course of our conversation we decided we would try to refer to God as she for a week and see what it sounded and felt like and if our understanding of God's character expanded through that process.

So, the other night Lauren introduced me to a great song called "How He Loves" by John Mark McMillian. We sang it together replacing "he" with "she" and I was surprised by how I was able to engage with the idea of God in a new and refreshing way.

I especially love the imagery in the first two verses below (edited from the original for the sake of our experiment.) Enjoy.

She is jealous for me,
Loves like a hurricane, I am a tree,
Bending beneath the weight of her wind and mercy.
When all of a sudden,
I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory,
And I realise just how beautiful You are,
And how great Your affections are for me.

She loves us,
O how She loves us,
O how She loves us,
O how She loves.

We are Her portion and She is our prize,
Drawn to redemption by the grace in Her eyes,
If grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking.
So Heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss,
And my heart turns violently inside of my chest,
I don’t have time to maintain these regrets,
When I think about, the way…

She loves us,
O how She loves us,
O how She loves us,
O how She loves.

New, New, New

Everything is new.
My neighborhood, house, routine, and especially my job. I am currently working as an AmeriCorps Service Member at the Orion Center as a GED lead tutor. The Orion Center serves homeless and street involved youth and provides a wide variety of services, among which include their education, job training, and employment services.
The transition from student teaching to tutoring in a drop-in style GED center has been challenging for me for a number of reasons which I don't have the energy to get into now.
I am learning that reframing my role and expectations are going to be necessary for my work this year. I am also learning that it is not that easy to do.