On poets and poetry

 This morning I sunk into reading Of Poetry & Protest: From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin edited by Philip Cushway and Michael Warr. I picked up this collection of poems about Black life by Black writers because it has a poem in it by Camille Dungy, and I'm working on a paper that refers to her work. (The paper is not going well. I struggle with writing academically, which is somewhat ironic since I'm a composition teacher and work in a writing center giving feedback to undergrads and graduates on their academic work.) I could not pull myself out of it until I had consumed the whole volume.

The book was published in 2016. While these are poems of protest, they are also poems that celebrate life and art. Each poem is preceded by a black and white portrait of the poet and a short essay about why they write poetry. It's a beautiful book, and the poems and the reflections about the love of language, the possibility of connection, the power of words reignite a longing to consume the pages, the ideas, the people, out of desire, love, a hunger to contain it all.  There it is in print - what gives us meaning and puts us in relation with one another and transforms pain into poetry and protest. How does poetry contain it all? How can we contain all that poetry? 

Some selections from the essays: 

"I relish the alterable space of a sentence along with words' inherent satellite meanings, shaped and hammered to rhythms in my head. Their force and propulsion feel like lifelines shared with friends. Many poets show the way and what we pray for is a passage into the living: song, prayer, coverted conversations."  - Major Jackson, p 96

"I write because I accept my responsibility as a witness, and because I believe in the trasnformational power of art." - Francis X. Walker p 196

"I write because I cannot stand by and say nothing, because I strive to make sense of the world I've been given, because the soul sings for justice and the song is poetry" - Natasha Tretheway p 189

"When you realize you are in the world to create, to be in love with Truth and Beauty, then only death becomes the thing that stops you."  - Lamont B. Steptoe p 185

"Amid the sorrow and upheaval of saying goodbye to a parent, I realized that poetry was helping me process and artculate my sense of loss and grief - indeed, that poetry was what would help me navigate and comprehend my life." - Tracy K Smith p 180

"Carlos Fuentes wrote: 'We only hurt others when we're incapable of imagining them.' Cruelty is caused by a failure of the imagination. The inability to assign the same feelings and values to another peson that you harbor in yourself. So I help people to imagine, me, Black women, men, and children, in all of our beautiful and terrible selves." - Sonia Sanchez 162

"I grew up seeing the world as filled with hyperbole, irony, metaphor, simile - and slightly 'off center.' ... The words keep dancing inside my head, the sounds an dvoices keep coming, and so I keep writing. ... There are moments when language still gives me a thrill, makes the hair on my arms stand up, takes my breath away. As long as I still fieel that, I'll still be in love with poetry. " - Reginald Harris p 85

What a gift words are. 

Poetry Month

The month is almost over, but I thought I would give a nod to National Poetry Month with a few poems from my class. Yesterday we talked about Wordsworth, Blake, Shelley, and Coleridge - no time for Keats and Byron, and Shelley got short shrift - just a quick discussion of "Ozymandias" as an example of Nature's power and permanence. (One of the themes of the day is "Nature's constancy in inconstancy.") Here are the others I assigned:  

William Blake, "The Lamb ," "The Tyger ," "The Fly," "The Sick Rose"
William Wordsworth "The World is too Much with Us ," "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," "Composed on Westminster Bridge ," "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour, July 13, 1798"
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner "

I've switched up the poems by Wordsworth in the past - sometimes skipping Tintern Abbey and instead reading "The Lesser Celandine" because we have a selection in our Norton anthology from his sister Dorothy Wordsworth's journals in which she mentions that he is working on a poem about that flower. I also have assigned "A Slumber Did my Spirit Seal" about being rolled around with rocks, and stones and trees," but it's depressing, and points to a different theme, although certainly it's about impermanence. 

Next week we'll read some Emerson ("Nature"), Emily Dickinson, "A Bird, came down the Walk," "A SERVICE OF SONG,""There is no Frigate like a Book," "A narrow Fellow in the Grass," "THE SECRET," "I Taste a Liquor"

Walt Whitman, "Facing West from California's Shores," "When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer," "Kosmos," " On the Beach at Night Alone," and Thoreau "Walking," and 3 chapters from Walden (I was assigning the whole book, but hardly anyone read it).  Then we turn to Gerard Manley Hopkins briefly:  "Pied Beauty," "The Windhover," "As Kingfishers Catch Fire," "God's  Grandeur." I meant to also assign "Spring and Fall," but left it off because it is more anthropocentric than ecocentric, arguably perhaps. It is a beautiful poem, though, and sometimes I'm tempted to croon "Margaret, are you grieving over Goldengrove unleaving? Leaves like the things of man, you with your fresh thoughts care for, can you?" to my own kids. It's strange and mournful, great for annoying teenagers when they are acting gloomy. 

Later in the term we will read Mary Oliver, everyone's favorite (sometimes I wish she weren't so popular because it feels trendy to read her poems, even though I enjoy reading them - just finished from the library her collection Blue Horses), Wendell Berry, W. S. Merwin, and Camille Dungy, whose poetry I was introduced to when she became poetry editor for Orion. Her "First Fire" is a good one for students (and teachers) in California wildfire zones. But my favorite is "What to Eat, What to Drink, and What to Leave for Poison." The title suggests a more ominous or foreboding tone, but the poem is a song of spring and full of delight - delight that I'm afraid strikes more at my heart's core full of homesickness for daffodils and crabapple trees than it resonates with my local students who don't know harsh winters followed by glorious springs. 

While reading an essay about minorities in the nature writing genre, I came across Tupac Shakur's "The Rose that Grew from Concrete." If I were better at popular culture, I would have known about this song and his album by the same name, and if I ever knew, I had forgotten. For some reason it reminds me of "To see a world in a grain of sand, and Heaven in a wildflower" by Blake - or maybe a similar poem? At any rate, I didn't include it in the syllabus, but by going down the rabbit hole of poetry by Tupac, I came across this moving verse: 

 (Links to an external site."

UNDER THE SKIES ABOVE: AFTER THE MISCARRIAGE by 2Pac

My child is out there somewhere
under the skies above
waiting anxiously 4 u and me
2 bless it with our love
A part of me a part of u
and a part of this love we share
will protect my unborn child
who lives dormant out there somewhere
Sometimes in my dreams
I imagine what it would be like
How could I properly guide him
when even I don't know what's right
Whether he is born in wealth or poverty
there will be no deficiency in love
I welcome this gift of life
given from GOD under the skies above

That's all I've got time for right now, but one of the parts of teaching I enjoy the most is rereading classic verses and sharing contemporary poetry with my students - it's fun to discover/rediscover insights and images. 

Covid adventures and a poem

We just received the news that one of our college sons is Covid positive. This is based on a test he took at home and mailed in before going to school.  They misplaced his test and had to reprocess it, so he didn't receive the results until he was sitting in the Dallas Fort Worth airport yesterday morning during his layover from San Diego to South Bend.  The doctor told him to stay in Dallas until this morning because then it would be 10 days since test date.  So he got a hotel room at the airport - DFW is convenient for this - and spent the night and now is on the way to South Bend. 

Not a symptom has he displayed. Nor has anyone else in the household.  But back on the Fourth of July, his worked his second job at the pizza place, came home and had dinner with us and a four of our friends, and then woke up the next morning to a call that his boss was positive with the virus.  His boss has now been in the hospital almost two weeks.   This first announcement scared us all. We notified our friends, shut the doors, and stayed at home for 14 days except for a few runs to the store.  In the meantime, our son was tested twice, and both tests came back negative.  I was tested and was negative, and our other son who works at a restaurant also tested negative.  So four negative tests in the family - which makes me skeptical of this positive test.  

Now we are in waiting mode, locked down again in quarantine.  We've had to notify a few people that we've seen in the last week.  I would like to count our 14 days from the day our son took his test, but the doctor said we should count our 14 days from the last contact.  He also said that the less conservative measure is 10 days without symptoms. And another option is to test at 4 days after the last contact and 7 days after the last contact. If those tests are both negative, then the quarantine is lifted. That option isn't really practical since we are so many people in one household.  

Blah. Is there a vaccine yet? I'll volunteer to be in the trials...

I came across this haiku from a link somewhere - it makes me miss the summer evenings of sitting on the back porch laughing and drinking wine and figuring out how to solve all the problems in the world. 

a party  

BY JOHN BRANDI

a party

where everyone says goodbye

then stays

John Brandi, "a party" from Seeding the Cosmos. Copyright © 2010 by John Brandi. Reprinted by permission of John Brandi.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/153125/a-party

Poetry Foundation links

My son shared this poem today by Lucille Clifton, which led to a diversion into the offerings of the Poetry Foundation.  Poetry speaks when we are not quite sure what to say.  

jasper texas 1998

BY LUCILLE CLIFTON

for j. byrd

i am a man's head hunched in the road.

i was chosen to speak by the members

of my body. the arm as it pulled away

pointed toward me, the hand opened once

and was gone.

why and why and why

should i call a white man brother?

who is the human in this place,

the thing that is dragged or the dragger?

what does my daughter say?

the sun is a blister overhead.

if i were alive i could not bear it.

the townsfolk sing we shall overcome

while hope bleeds slowly from my mouth

into the dirt that covers us all.

i am done with this dust. i am done.

Lucille Clifton, "jasper texas 1998" from Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000. Copyright © 2000 by Lucille Clifton. Reprinted with the permission of BOA Editions, Ltd. Source: Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000 (BOA Editions Ltd., 2000)

Boy Breaking Glass

BY GWENDOLYN BROOKS

To Marc Crawford
from whom the commission

Whose broken window is a cry of art   

(success, that winks aware

as elegance, as a treasonable faith)

is raw: is sonic: is old-eyed première.

Our beautiful flaw and terrible ornament.   

Our barbarous and metal little man.

“I shall create! If not a note, a hole.   

If not an overture, a desecration.”

Full of pepper and light

and Salt and night and cargoes.

“Don’t go down the plank

if you see there’s no extension.   

Each to his grief, each to

his loneliness and fidgety revenge.

Nobody knew where I was and now I am no longer there.”

The only sanity is a cup of tea.   

The music is in minors.

Each one other

is having different weather.

“It was you, it was you who threw away my name!   

And this is everything I have for me.”

Who has not Congress, lobster, love, luau,   

the Regency Room, the Statue of Liberty,   

runs. A sloppy amalgamation.

A mistake.

A cliff.

A hymn, a snare, and an exceeding sun.

Gwendolyn Brooks, “Boy Breaking Glass,” from Blacks (Chicago: Third World Press, 1987). Reprinted by consent of Brooks Permissions. Source: Blacks (Third World Press, 1987)

Homage to Black Madonnas

BY MARGARET BURROUGHS

Venerable black women

You of yesterday, you of today.

Black mothers of tomorrow yet to be

These lines are homage to you, for you. 

Magnificent black women

The poets and singers have been remiss

Have sung too few poems and songs of you

And the image makers have not recorded your beauty.

Sheba, Nefertiti, Zaiditu, Cleopatra.

Black women, Mothers of humanity, Mother original

Your black children here salute you.

You, bartered, sold, insulted, raped and defiled,

Debased and debauched for four centuries. 

Strong women, Gannet, Tubman and Truth. 

Weary black women

Your breasts gaunt from nurturing theirs first

And later sustaining yours, caring for theirs

At the same instance providing for yours also.

Women forgotten, Mandy, Melindy, Cindy, and Lisa.

Gentle black women

While being hated, yet teaching love

Being scorned, yet teaching respect

Being humiliated and teaching Compassion.

Humble women, Bessie, Mattie, Lucey, Ann and Willie Mae. 

Resourceful black women, with tact

Managing to make do, alter clothing,

Stretch meals, Making room, Prodding, Bolstering

Nudging us on, Protecting, teaching survival. 

Laney, Bethune, Keckley, Terrel and Brown. 

Militant black women, defending yours with fury

Standing firm, picketing and demonstrating

Kneeling in, sitting in and wading in

Standing, walking, marching and boycotting. 

Parks, Wells, Pleasant and Louvestre. 

Discerning black women, women of genius

Setting your children a proper example

Teaching that each generation must do its part

To improve life for those coming after. 

Nannie, Gaines, Burroughs, Maggie Walker. 

Courageous black women, brave and fearless

Seeking to make a home among the unfriendly

Sending your children off to school

To pass unscathed through walls of hate.

Lucy, Bates, Richardson, and Hamer.

Angry black women and understanding

Aware of efforts to stunt your men

Yet urging them manhood again.

Diana, Gloria, Thelma, Ethel, Eva and Marion.

Heroic black women, women of glory

Not turning back, never giving up

Equalling, surpassing the stature

Of any race of women, anywhere, any time.

Billie, Ella, Dinah, Sis-Sirretta, Mahalia.

Black women of genius, brilliant women

Walking through the hateful valleys

In dignity, strength and such serene composure

That even your enemies tremble insecure. 

Hansberry, Talbert, Bonds and Baker. 

Magnificent black women, hopeful women

Believing that trouble doesn't last always

Knowing this truth, that those who are slaves today

May well be the masters tomorrow, even sooner. 

Sisters with all women, black women

Your sufferings echo those of all the oppressed.

Join together all of you in a universal cry

For Peace and the good life for all. The world listens. 

Margaret Burroughs, "Homage to Black Madonnas" from What Shall I Tell My Children Who Are Black?.  Copyright © 1968, 1992 by Margaret Burroughs.  Reprinted by permission of the Margaret Burroughs Estate. 

Other poems by Margaret Burroughs can be found here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/146263/what-shall-i-tell-my-children-who-are-black-reflections-of-an-african-american-mother

and the first two poems are from this collection:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/collections/101581/poems-of-protest-resistance-and-empowerment

Poetry and politics

I've been meaning to incorporate more poetry into our days during the month of April, but that hasn't really happened.  Now that the month is drawing to a close, here are a few nods to the art.

A new poet to me is Kayo Chingonyi, whose work I just was introduced to by a fellow teacher. Here is one of his pieces. The title comes from a Zambian word for initiation.

Kumukandaby Kayo Chingonyi

Since I haven't danced among my fellow initiates,
following a looped procession from woods at the edge
of a village, Tata’s people would think me unfinished 
– a child who never sloughed off the childish estate
to cross the river boys of our tribe must cross
in order to die and come back grown.

I was raised in a strange land, by small increments:
When I bathed my mother the days she was too weak,
when auntie broke the news and I chose a yellow suit
and white shoes to dress my mother’s body,
at the grave-side when the man I almost grew to call
dad, though we both needed a hug, shook my hand.
what would he make of these literary pretensions,
this need to speak with a tongue that isn’t mine?

If my alternate self, who never left, could see me
what would he make of these literary pretensions,
this need to speak with a tongue that isn’t mine?
Would he be strange to me as I to him, frowning 
as he greets me in the language of my father
and my father’s father and my father’s father’s father?

I mentioned the Beth Ann Fennelly article about the role of literature in increasing empathy.  Chingonyi's poetry is a good example of how poetry also shares in that ability to shift perspectives and provide insight into another's life. The teacher who shared the info about Chingonyi interviewed him as part of a series of interviews with Dylan Thomas Prize winners. Here is a 10 minute clip of Kayo Chingonyi talking about his writing life. https://soundcloud.com/user-588915112/kayo-chingonyi-2018-winner.  More about his work: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/28/kayo-chingonyi-poet-dylan-thomas-prize

Another good clip I have been meaning to share isn't about poetry per se - and maybe I shared this before? - but this video called "Nihonga: Slow Art" touches on the way faith forms art.  This video features the work of abstract artist Makoto Fujimura who was scheduled to speak at University of Dallas for their McDermott Lecture series, but the lecture was cancelled.
  https://www.makotofujimura.com/

Meanwhile art-making happens around here in small ways - pictures for elderly neighbors. Potholders. Painting old wooden ornaments. Painting rocks. Sidewalk chalk designs. Baking. Lots of hair braiding and nail art. I have a large stash of craft supplies leftover from co-op and VBS and CRE.  Might as well use them up.  My intentions to incorporate more art and music into our days are largely still intentions and not actions, a small failure to move from concept to product, but I need to remind myself to focus more on the small successes.

There were a number of small successes and failures yesterday.  A failure was spending too much time responding in my head to a Facebook post that touched a nerve. A success was restraining myself from actually responding. A success was spending a pleasant hour in the afternoon sunshine on opposite sides of the sidewalk from a friend as we let our little girls play charades - a good non-touching game. A failure was letting slip that we had made a little field trip back in late March to the mountains and another trip to the military beach about an hour north last weekend.  I'm afraid she was a little shocked. I have tried not to talk very much about our little illicit excursions because, even though our interactions with others were very limited - and masked and gloved - they really aren't in the spirit of "Stay home" orders.

I'm afraid I'm not a great team player.  It doesn't help that I don't firsthand know anyone who actually has the virus, although a neighbor thinks she had it. A friend of a friend's sister had a bad case and was really sick and in the hospital a few days.  Our acquaintances on the Theodore Roosevelt were among the 4/5ths of sailors who tested negative.  I am not sorry to have the kids doing school at home, and I don't mind the restrictions on shopping and dining out, but I am inordinately gladdened by the report that the beaches and some parks have opened for exercise.  On the other hand, I am sorry to hear about thousands of gallons of milk being poured into the ground, chickens and pigs being slaughtered, and fields of vegetables being plowed under because farmers don't have a market for their food with all the restaurants closed, and they can't afford to nurture, harvest, or process, package, and transport it to the groceries. Meanwhile people are going hungry because they are out of a job and the stores are out of food.  How many kids aren't getting their online schoolwork done because they don't have motivation, they don't have access, or they don't have someone to explain concepts clearly? I tend to sympathize with the governors who think there must be a safe way to start reopening the economy now that more masks are available, and people are accustomed to wearing them, and the six feet rule is mostly followed.  We shall see.

Enough of my partially formed political thoughts for now.  I have been meaning to turn more to reading and research.  A success yesterday was I did look up some conferences and literary societies and graduate programs that focus on environmental humanities.  A failure is that I have not drummed up enough motivation or time to write up ideas for abstracts. On the other hand, I am loving Saints and Villains,  the novel about Dietrich Bonhoeffer I'm reading for my book club.  And success: I finally finished Pico Iyer's The Lady and the Monk about his year in Kyoto and his developing relationship with the young Japanese woman who eventually becomes his wife. I checked it out from the library a week or so before everything shut down. The book is a travel narrative. It rambles slowly through the streets and through different encounters. Sachiko, the young lady, is unhappily married and unhappily restrained by the expectations demanded of her by the culture.  She gradually spends more and more time with Pico, ostensibly to practice English and to show him Kyoto and the surrounding areas, but also because he represents the freedom she desires.  I really like Iyer's writing, but it does not move quickly. It is perhaps akin to the "slow art" that Fujimura describes.

Back to poetry. I learned via social media that Irish poet Eavan Boland died.  The poem of hers most familiar to me is "Becoming Anne Bradstreet," but her passing led me down the rabbit trail of reading more of her poems.  Here is "Becoming Anne Bradstreet," a fitting poem for Poetry Month about the influence of poets and their words and the power of imagination.

Becoming Anne Bradstreet    EAVAN BOLAND

It happens again
As soon as I take down her book and open it.

I turn the page.
My skies rise higher and hang younger stars.

The ship's rail freezes.
Mare Hibernicum leads to Anne Bradstreet's coast.
 A blackbird leaves her pine trees
And lands in my spruce trees.
 I open my door on a Dublin street.
Her child/her words are staring up at me:
 In better dress to trim thee was my mind,But nought save home-spun cloth, i' th' house I find. We say home truthsBecause her words can be at home anywhere—

At the source, at the end and whenever
The book lies open and I am again

An Irish poet watching an English woman
Become an American poet.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55336/becoming-anne-bradstreet

Poetry for April

Because April is going by faster than I can keep track...

Some quick notes:
Someone turned five on Monday! No party this year;  just cupcakes with co-op.

This was from a hike we took the other day at the end of the kids' Spring Break. We were looking for the superbloom but wanted to avoid crowds. We saw a few patches of wild mustard flowering and some random pink flowers. There are poppies planted along the highways, and some pretty blooms along our own coastal walk, so I'm not sorry we didn't drive out to the desert with the crowds. Or maybe just a little sorry.

Someone else turns 46 tomorrow! No party for him either; just Italian feast with cousins.

Sycamore Canyon hike

We have several other family birthdays in April, a couple confirmations, and Easter to celebrate. Holy Week already! I need to prepare a lesson for my fifth grade religious ed class. We just finished presenting living stations of the cross to the other classes, so we are due for some fun and games, maybe a craft, but I need more hours in the day to plan.

Lest we give too much thought to celebrating, I have also been finishing up all of our financial obligations -  the last three things are three CSS profiles. You would think the College Board would allow you to submit one file per family, but I have to fill it out for each college student. Same thing with the FAFSA. I also waited until April to file taxes  - five sets this year. plus seven state tax forms because of the kids making money in different states. Now I'm facing the April 15 deadlines.  Most of the taxes I do for free online, but California has the most complicated tax forms, and I didn't want to pay to file a second state tax, so I did it myself on a pdf. I'll pay next year. 

And classes have been rolling along. I had a heck of a time grading papers on Walden. A good chunk of them were excessively vague and/or redundant. They took me a while to grade because I couldn't figure out what they were about. I think when I put "collegiate level diction" as a criterion in the rubric, some students thought it would be a good idea to look up words in the thesaurus and sprinkle them through their papers.  Or perhaps they didn't read past page 9 in Thoreau's book, so they had to make some guesses about the rest of the book. I just know it took me much longer to grade than it should have.

Track season is also underway. I am again helping with middle school track, even though I was going to take a break this year. After today's practice, I may go into early retirement after all. Perhaps the moon is full or something, but these kids had a lot of energy. Except for running. They did not want to run. Parents, if your kids don't like to run, please sign them up for something like swimming or tennis. Golf, maybe. But not track.

By the first week of May, life will slow down considerably - track will end, college will end, our pre-school co-op will end, religious ed will end, all the financial aid documents will be submitted, and I can catch up on sleep again.

Until then, here are poems about wild geese that we read in class. We don't see a lot of wild geese here, although we do host wild parrots who nest here this time of year.  Occasionally I will see some visiting waterfowl on the bay, but I don't think I have seen any Canada geese, which are what I picture when I read these poems, although the exact kind of wild geese are never noted.  Thoreau also talks about the geese coming and going from Walden Pond.  The second two poems were written by Mary Oliver and W. S. Merwin, authors who passed away this year. May Wendell Berry write for a few more years yet, or at least be a pillar reminding us where we stand.

The Wild Geese

Horseback on Sunday morning,
harvest over, we taste persimmon
and wild grape, sharp sweet
of summer's end. In time's maze 
over fall fields, we name names
that went west from here, names
that rest on graves. We open
a persimmon seed to find the tree
that stands in promise,
pale, in the seed's marrow.
Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear,
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye
clear. What we need is here.

From Selected Poems of Wendell Berry,

by Wendell Berry.  Copyright 1998 by Wendell Berry.  With permission of author and Counterpoint Press, a member of Perseus Book Group. https://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/go-local/poetry-by-wendell-berry

The Wild Geese

It was always for the animals that I grieved most
for the animals I had seen and for those
I had only heard of or dreamed about
or seen in cages or lying beside the roadfor those forgotten and those long remembered
for the lost ones that were never found againamong people there were words we all knew
even if we did not say them and although
they were always inadequate when we said them
they were there if we wanted them when the time came
with the animals always there was only
presence as long as it was present and then
only absence suddenly and no word for it
in all the great written wisdom of China
where are the animals when were they lost
where are the ancestors who knew the way
without them all wise words are bits of sand
twitching on the dunes where the forests
once whispered in their echoing ancient tongue
and the animals knew their way among the trees
only in the old poems does their presence survive
the gibbons call from the mountain gorges
the old words all deepen the great absence
the vastness of all that has been lost
it is still there when the poet in exile
looks up long ago hearing the voices
of wild geese far above him flying home

— W.S. Merwin, from his forthcoming book Garden Time (Copper Canyon Press, 2016).  Copyright © 2016 by W. S. Merwin.  Used by permission of the publishers, www.coppercanyonpress.org. https://merwinconservancy.org/2016/09/the-wild-geese-by-w-s-merwin/

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

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.

https://onbeing.org/blog/mary-oliver-reads-wild-geese/