Mary Oliver

House of Light

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  • mhas quoted3 years ago
    if the bees know that otherwise death

    is everywhere, even in the red swamp

    of a flower. But they did this

    with no small amount of desperation—you might say: love
  • .has quoted2 years ago
    so I thought:

    maybe death

    isn’t darkness, after all,

    but so much light

    wrapping itself around us—

    as soft as feathers—

    that we are instantly weary

    of looking, and looking, and shut our eyes,

    not without amazement,

    and let ourselves be carried,

    as through the translucence of mica,

    to the river

    that is without the least dapple or shadow—

    that is nothing but light—scalding, aortal light—

    in which we are washed and washed

    out of our bones.
  • .has quoted2 years ago
    I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing—

    that the light is everything—that it is more than the sum

    of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.
  • .has quoted2 years ago
    There are so many stories,

    more beautiful than answers.
  • .has quoted2 years ago
    this is what would finish him:

    not the gloom, which was only terrible,

    but those last yellow fields, where clearly

    nothing in the world mattered, or ever would,

    but the insensible light.
  • .has quoted2 years ago
    Is there anything more important

    than hunger and happiness?
  • .has quoted2 years ago
    how could anyone believe

    that anything in this world

    is only what it appears to be—

    that anything is ever final—

    that anything, in spite of its absence,

    ever dies

    a perfect death?
  • .has quoted2 years ago
    Death isn’t just an idea.

    When we die the body breaks open

    like a river;

    the old body goes on, climbing the hill.
  • .has quoted2 years ago
    I think I will always be lonely

    in this world, where the cattle

    graze like a black and white river—

    where the ravishing lilies

    melt, without protest, on their tongues—

    where the hummingbird, whenever there is a fuss,

    just rises and floats away.
  • .has quoted2 years ago
    I think this is

    the prettiest world—so long as you don’t mind

    a little dying, how could there be a day in your whole life

    that doesn’t have its splash of happiness?
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