Mary Oliver: Citations en anglais
Variante: Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.
Source: Thirst
"In Blackwater Woods"
American Primitive (1983)
Source: New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1
Source: New and Selected Poems, Vol. 2
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
"The Summer Day"
New and Selected Poems (1992)
Variante: What will you do with your one precious, wild life?
Source: New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1
“Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.”
"Sometimes", § 4
Red Bird (2008)
Variante: Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
Source: Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays
“You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”
"Wild Geese"
Dream Work (1986)
Contexte: 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.
“Two or three times in my life I discovered love.
Each time it seemed to solve everything.”
"Sometimes", § 5
Red Bird (2008)
Contexte: Two or three times in my life I discovered love.
Each time it seemed to solve everything.
Each time it solved a great many things
but not everything.
Yet left me as grateful as if it had indeed, and
thoroughly, solved everything.
"Sometimes", § 7
Red Bird (2008)
Contexte: Death waits for me, I know it, around
one corner or another.
This doesn't amuse me.
Neither does it frighten me. After the rain, I went back into the field of sunflowers.
It was cool, and I was anything but drowsy.
I walked slowly, and listened to the crazy roots, in the drenched earth, laughing and growing.
“I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.”
"When Death Comes"
New and Selected Poems, Volume 2 (2005)
Variante: When it’s over, I want to say: All my life I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
Source: New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1
“maybe death
isn't darkness, after all,
but so much light
wrapping itself around us”
Source: Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays
“Listen. Are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?”
Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches?
West Wind (1997)
