“The end of life has its own nature also worth our attention.”
—Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver rarely granted interviews. The richest exception was a 2015 interview with Krista Tippett, during which the topic of death arose. She recited a poem that I would like to reprint here.
"About an hour into our interview with Mary Oliver, the poet discusses what she calls 'the cancer visit.' In 2012 she was diagnosed with lung cancer and said that death had 'left his calling card.' She was treated and was given 'a clean bill of health.'"
"In her collection Blue Horses, 'The Fourth Sign of the Zodiac' is a four-part poem that recalls the shadowy underworld of loss and survival. And yet, grief is coupled with a hopefulness. The poem is petitionary, asking of us to make what we can of the time we have left."
The Fourth Sign of the Zodiac
by Mary Oliver
1.
Why should I have been surprised?
Hunters walk the forest
without a sound.
The hunter, strapped to his rifle,
the fox on his feet of silk,
the serpent on his empire of muscles—
all move in a stillness,
hungry, careful, intent.
Just as the cancer
entered the forest of my body,
without a sound.
2.
The question is,
what will it be like
after the last day?
Will I float
into the sky
or will I fray
within the earth or a river—
remembering nothing?
How desperate I would be
if I couldn’t remember
the sun rising, if I couldn’t
remember trees, rivers; if I couldn’t
even remember, beloved,
your beloved name.
3.
I know, you never intended to be in this world.
But you’re in it all the same.
so why not get started immediately.
I mean, belonging to it.
There is so much to admire, to weep over.
And to write music or poems about.
Bless the feet that take you to and fro.
Bless the eyes and the listening ears.
Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste.
Bless touching.
You could live a hundred years, it’s happened.
Or not.
I am speaking from the fortunate platform
of many years,
none of which, I think, I ever wasted.
Do you need a prod?
Do you need a little darkness to get you going?
Let me be urgent as a knife, then,
and remind you of Keats,
so single of purpose and thinking, for a while,
he had a lifetime.
4.
Late yesterday afternoon, in the heat,
all the fragile blue flowers in bloom
in the shrubs in the yard next door had
tumbled from the shrubs and lay
wrinkled and fading in the grass. But
this morning the shrubs were full of
the blue flowers again. There wasn’t
a single one on the grass. How, I
wondered, did they roll back up to
the branches, that fiercely wanting,
as we all do, just a little more of
life?
The poems of Mary Oliver are prayers that anyone can pray. They are spacious and simple, expansive and ordinary. They don’t require us to believe in anything in particular, but they do ask us to pay attention to that fleeting and particular space of a moment.
When asked about the spiritual life of her childhood, Mary Oliver told Krista Tippett:
“Well, I would define it now very differently from when I was a child. I was sent to Sunday School, as many kids are. And then I had trouble with the Resurrection. So I would not join the church. But I was still probably more interested than many of the kids who did enter into the church. It’s been one of the most important interests of my life. And continues to be."
"And it doesn’t have to be Christianity, or Islam. I’m very much taken with the poet Rumi. Who is a Muslim, a Sufi poet. I read him every day. I have no answers, but I have some suggestions. I know that a life is much richer with a spiritual part to it."
Oliver has said that when she talks about prayer she’s thinking of that oft-quoted line of Rumi’s: “There are a hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”
Another poem of Mary Oliver will bring this entry to a close:
I Happened to Be Standing
by Mary Oliver
I don't know where prayers go,
or what they do.
Do cats pray, while they sleep
half-asleep in the sun?
Does the opossum pray as it
crosses the street?
The sunflowers? The old black oak
growing older every year?
I know I can walk through the world,
along the shore or under the trees,
with my mind filled with things
of little importance, in full
self-attendance. A condition I can't really
call being alive
Is a prayer a gift, or a petition,
or does it matter?
The sunflowers blaze, maybe that's their way.
Maybe the cats are sound asleep. Maybe not.
While I was thinking this I happened to be standing
just outside my door, with my notebook open,
which is the way I begin every morning.
Then a wren in the privet began to sing.
He was positively drenched in enthusiasm,
I don't know why. And yet, why not.
I wouldn't persuade you from whatever you believe
or whatever you don't. That's your business.
But I thought, of the wren's singing, what could this be
if it isn't a prayer?
So I just listened, my pen in the air.