One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice — though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. “Mend my life!” each voice cried. But you didn’t stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little, as you left their voice behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do — determined to save the only life that you could save.
You can find this poem in Mary Oliver’s Pulitzer Prize winning work— Dream Work
I was immediately reminded of verses 153-154 from the Dhammapada’s chapter on Old Age, which read:
Through many births
I have wandered on and on,
Searching for, but never finding,
The builder of this house.
To be born again and again is suffering.
House-builder, you are seen!
You will not build a house again!
The rafters are broken,
The ridgepole destroyed;
The mind, gone to the Unconstructed,
Has reached the end of craving!
Thank you for the poem this morning. 🙏
As close to gospel as words can be. Essentially this is all we need to know simplified into poetry. We were always the poem. Thank you Mary! 🙏❤️