Yesterday, Larry Robinson, the extraordinary Sonoma County poet sent out on his wonderful daily-poetry list, Poetry Lovers a poem by Mary Oliver “Shadows”:
Shadows
Everyone knows the great energies running amok cast
terrible shadows, that each of the so-called
senseless acts has its thread looping
back through the world and into a human heart.
And meanwhile
the gold-trimmed thunder
wanders the sky; the river
may be filling the cellars of the sleeping town.
Cyclone, fire and their merry cousins
brings us to grief - but these are the hours
with the old wooden-god faces;
we lift them to our shoulders like so many
black coffins, we continue walking
into the future. I don’t mean
there are no bodies in the river,
or bones broken by the wind. I mean
everyone who has heard the lethal train-roar
of the tornado swears there was no mention ever
of any person, or reason - I mean
the waters rise without any plot upon
history, or even geography. Whatever
power of the earth rampages , we turn to it
dazed but anonymous eyes; whatever
the name of the catastrophe, it is never
the opposite of truth.
- Mary Oliver
He had made an error, changing the last word, to truth, when Mary had written:
Shadows
Everyone knows the great energies running amok cast
terrible shadows, that each of the so-called
senseless acts has its thread looping
back through the world and into a human heart.
And meanwhile
the gold-trimmed thunder
wanders the sky; the river
may be filling the cellars of the sleeping town.
Cyclone, fire and their merry cousins
brings us to grief - but these are the hours
with the old wooden-god faces;
we lift them to our shoulders like so many
black coffins, we continue walking
into the future. I don’t mean
there are no bodies in the river,
or bones broken by the wind. I mean
everyone who has heard the lethal train-roar
of the tornado swears there was no mention ever
of any person, or reason - I mean
the waters rise without any plot upon
history, or even geography. Whatever
power of the earth rampages , we turn to it
dazed but anonymous eyes; whatever
the name of the catastrophe, it is never
the opposite of love.
- Mary Oliver
Now that we have removed the deep, deep self whose gate is often boredom, by our culture of distraction, it’s good to remember the gold-trimmed thunder can suddenly and abruptly make what’s important known in the deep, deep revealing at that moment, with truth and love.
Well, y’all, trying again tomorrow,
Con/Jur/d, 7/21/2021
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