Friday, September 21, 2007

20. OLIVER'S AZURES

From the Archives

(March 2005) Here’s a poem by Mary Oliver. I’ll post an absolutely beautiful (and sexy) one of her poems later, but am feeling weighed down/frustrated with some stuff right now—which made me think of "Spring Azures." Think I’ll put on my gym clothes and go for a nice long walk, now that the sun has finally come out.

SPRING AZURES
by Mary Oliver

In the spring the blue azures bow down
at the edges of shallow puddles
to drink the black rain water.
Then they rise and float away into the fields.

Sometimes the great bones of my life feel so heavy,
and all the tricks my body knows—
the opposable thumbs, the kneecaps,
and the mind clicking and clicking—

don’t seem enough to carry me through this world
and I think: how I would like
to have wings—
blue ones—
ribbons of flame.

How I would like to open them, and rise
from the black rain water.

And then I think of Blake, in the dirt and sweat of London—a boy
staring through the window, when God came
fluttering up.

Of course, he screamed,
seeing the bobbin of God’s blue body
leaning on the sill,
and the thousand-faceted eyes.

Well, who knows.
Who knows what hung, fluttering, at the window
between him and the darkness.

Anyway, Blake the hosier’s son stood up
and turned away from the sooty sill and the dark eyes—
turned away forever
from the factories, the personal strivings,

to a life of the imagination.

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