Wild Geese

This is one of my favorite poems ever. I found it in a book of famous and not-so-famous poetry that I started keeping when I was in high school. I want to add to the book, so if you want to send me any of your favorite poems, please do!

My favorite thing about this poem is that it makes me feel small, making my problems and concerns feel miniscule in comparison to nature. And that’s a really good thing. We can all whine and despair, but “meanwhile the world goes on.” If we waste our time obsessing over our own problems, we may miss beautiful opportunities that are flying all around us. This poem reminds me to love what I love, and to look up in the sky when I’d rather hide inside myself.

 

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.

An obligation

On Friday I went to the closing presentation of the University of Pittsburgh’s graduate research conference on education.  The keynote speaker was Dr. William Ayers.  Although he’s widely known as a controversial figure from the 2008 presidential election, I was thrilled to find out what his actual life’s work is: education.  His speech covered many of the issues I have read about over the past year at school, but he was able to provide some answers as well.  Bill said that while we argue over whether or not our president is leading us in the right direction, or whether or not our president is truly in line with our values, we forget that our only true power is that over ourselves.  If we want to change the world of education, or any world at all, we have to take action ourselves in the right direction.  Our voices may not influence Washington, but they will influence something much more important: the people.

Bill read part of a poem by Pablo Neruda called The Poet’s Obligation, but which he calls The Teacher’s Obligation.  That is, the teacher’s job is not to feed children facts, but to go along with students on a journey of inquiry and discovery.  Here is the beautiful poem, in what I hope is an accurate translation!

To whoever is not listening to the sea
this Friday morning, to whoever is cooped up
in house or office, factory or woman
or street or mine or harsh prison cell:
to him I come, and, without speaking or looking,
I arrive and open the door of his prison,
and a vibration starts up, vague and insistent,
a great fragment of thunder sets in motion
the rumble of the planet and the foam,
the raucous rivers of the ocean flood,
the star vibrates swiftly in its corona,
and the sea is beating, dying and continuing.

So, drawn on by my destiny,
I ceaselessly must listen to and keep
the sea’s lamenting in my awareness,
I must feel the crash of the hard water
and gather it up in a perpetual cup
so that, wherever those in prison may be,
wherever they suffer the autumn’s castigation,
I may be there with an errant wave,
I may move, passing through windows,
and hearing me, eyes will glance upward
saying, “How can I reach the sea?”
And I shall broadcast, saying nothing,
the starry echoes of the wave,
a breaking up of foam and of quicksand,
a rustling of salt withdrawing,
the grey cry of sea-birds on the coast.

So, through me, freedom and the sea
will make their answer to the shuttered heart.

http://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/N/NerudaPablo/PoetsObligat.htm