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 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 clear 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.
         —Mary Oliver
 
 

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 one 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 was full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little
as you left their voices 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 you could save.

        —Mary Oliver

There is a broken-ness
Out of which comes the unbroken
A shatteredness
out of which blooms the unshatterable
There is a sorrow
beyond all grief which leads to joy
And a fragility
out of whose depths emerges strength
There is a hollow space
too vast for words
Through which we pass with each loss
out of whose darkness
we are sanctioned into being
There is a cry deeper than all sound
whose serrated edges cut the heart
as we break open
to the place inside us
which is unbreakable and whole.
All the while learning to sing.

      —Rashani

The day will come when with elation
You will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror
And each will smile at the other's welcome saying:
"sit, here, eat!"
You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
Give wine, give bread, give back your heart to itself
to the stranger who has loved you all your life
whom you ignored for another,
who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from your bookshelf
the photographs, the desperate notes.
Peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit! Feast on  your life.  Feast on your life.

        —Derek Walcott
 

As we live we are transmitters of life.
And when we fail to transmit life, life fails to flow through us.

That is part of the mystery of sex, it is a flow onwards.
Sexless people transmit nothing.

And if, as we work, we can transmit life into our work,
life, still more life, rushes into us to compensate, to be ready
and we ripple with life through our days.

Even if it is a woman making an apple dumpling, or a man a stool,
if life goes into the pudding, good is the pudding,
good is the stool,
content is the woman, with fresh life rippling in to her,
content is the man.

Give and it shall be give unto you
is still the truth about life
But giving life is not so easy.
It doesn't mean handing it out to some mean fool, or letting the living dead eat you up.
It means kindling the life-quality where it was not,
even if it's only in the whiteness of a washed pocket-handkerchief.

        —D.H. Lawrence

The mind is an ocean
And so many beings are swimming there
Dimly known, half seen
And our body is a cup floating on that ocean
Soon it will fill and sink
And not even one bubble
will show where it went down.

The spirit is so near that you can’t see it.
But reach for it!
Don’t be a jar full of water
Who’s rim is always dry.
Don’t be the rider
who gallops all night
and never sees the horse that is beneath him.

My poems resemble the bread of Egypt
one night passes over them and you can’t eat them anymore.
So gobble them down now while they're still fresh
Before the dust of the world settles on them.
Where a poem belongs is here, in the warmth of the chest.
Out in the world it dies of cold.
You’ve seen a fish: put him on dry land:
He quivers for a few moments and then he’s still.
And even if you eat these poems while they’re still fresh
You still have to bring forward many images yourself.
Actually my friend, what you’re eating is your own imagination.
These poems are not just a bunch of old proverbs!

Ecstatic love is an ocean
The milky way is a flake of foam floating on that ocean
The stars wheel around the north pole
and ecstatic love turns them
If there were no ecstatic love the whole world will be stuck
Do you think that a piece of flint would change into a plant otherwise?
Grass agrees to die so it can rise up and gain a little of the animal’s enthusiasm
And the animal soul in turn sacrifices itself for what?
To help that wind through one waft of which Mary became with child.
Without that wind all creatures on earth would be as stiff as a glacier
Instead of being as they are: searching night and day for green things, flying.
Every bit of dust climbs toward the secret one like a sapling.
It climbs and says nothing
And that silence is a wild praise of the secret one.

When ink joins with pen, then the blank paper
can say something.  Rushes and reeds must be woven
to be useful as a mat.  If they weren't interlaced,
the wind would blow them away.
Like that, God paired up
creatures and gave them friendship.
 
 

It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain! I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it. I want to know if you can be with JOY, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, or to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. I want to know if you can be faithful and therefore be trustworthy. I want to know if you can see beauty even when it is not pretty everyday, and if you can source your life on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, "YES!"

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after a night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done for the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.