Life poems
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An Afternoon In The Stacks
© Mary Oliver
Closing the book, I find I have left my head
inside. It is dark in here, but the chapters open
their beautiful spaces and give a rustling sound,
words adjusting themselves to their meaning.
The Buddha's Last Instruction
© Mary Oliver
"Make of yourself a light"
said the Buddha,
before he died.
I think of this every morning
Black Oaks
© Mary Oliver
Not one can manage a single sound though the blue jays
carp and whistle all day in the branches, without
the push of the wind.
Flare
© Mary Oliver
It is not the sunrise,
which is a red rinse,
which is flaring all over the eastern sky;
The Swan
© Mary Oliver
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
Cold Poem
© Mary Oliver
I think of summer with its luminous fruit,
blossoms rounding to berries, leaves,
handfuls of grain.
The Summer Day
© Mary Oliver
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
A Meeting
© Mary Oliver
She steps into the dark swamp
where the long wait ends.The secret slippery package
drops to the weeds.She leans her long neck and tongues it
between breaths slack with exhaustionand after a while it rises and becomes a creature
The Journey
© Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
When Death Comes
© Mary Oliver
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
The Flask
© Charles Baudelaire
THERE are some powerful odours that can pass
Out of the stoppard flagon; even glass
To them is porous. Oft when some old box
Brought from the East is opened and the locks
Balcony
© Charles Baudelaire
MOTHER of memories, mistress of mistresses,
O thou, my pleasure, thou, all my desire,
Thou shalt recall the beauty of caresses,
The charm of evenings by the gentle fire,
The Living Flame
© Charles Baudelaire
THEY pass before me, these Eyes full of light,
Eyes made magnetic by some angel wise;
The holy brothers pass before my sight,
And cast their diamond fires in my dim eyes.
A Former Life
© Charles Baudelaire
LONG since, I lived beneath vast porticoes,
By many ocean-sunsets tinged and fired,
Where mighty pillars, in majestic rows,
Seemed like basaltic caves when day expired.
The Dance Of Death
© Charles Baudelaire
CARRYING bouquet, and handkerchief, and gloves,
Proud of her height as when she lived, she moves
With all the careless and high-stepping grace,
And the extravagant courtesan's thin face.
My Earlier Life
© Charles Baudelaire
I've been home a long time among the vast porticos,
Which the mariner sun has tinged with a million fires,
Whose grandest pillars, upright, majestic and cold
Render them the same, this evening, as caves with basalt spires.
Beacons
© Charles Baudelaire
Reubens, river of forgetfulness, garden of sloth,
Pillow of wet flesh that one cannot love,
But where life throngs and seethes without cease
Like the air in the sky and the water in the sea.
