SELECT TITLES ALSO BY MARY OLIVER
POETRY
A Thousand Mornings
American Primitive
Dream Work
New and Selected Poems, Volume One
White Pine
The Leaf and the Cloud
What Do We Know
Why I Wake Early
New and Selected Poems, Volume Two
Swan
PROSE
Blue Pastures
Winter Hours
A Poetry Handbook
Dog Songs
Thirty-five
Dog Songs
and
One Essay
MARY OLIVER
THE PENGUIN PRESS · NEW YORK · 2013
THE PENGUIN PRESS
Published by the Penguin Group
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Copyright © Mary Oliver, 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
The credits constitute an extension of this copyright page.
ISBN 978-1-101-63873-6
Illustrations by John Burgoyne
Book design by Claire Naylon Vaccaro
For Anne Taylor and Martin Michaelson
CONTENTS
How It Begins
How It Is with Us, and How It Is with Them
If You Are Holding This Book
Every Dog’s Story
The Storm (Bear)
Conversations
Luke’s Junkyard Song
Luke
Her Grave
Benjamin, Who Came from Who Knows Where
The Dog Has Run Off Again
Holding On to Benjamin
The Poetry Teacher
Bazougey
Ropes
Percy
School
Little Dog’s Rhapsody in the Night
Time Passes
Untitled
Percy Wakes Me
The Sweetness of Dogs
Percy Speaks While I Am Doing Taxes
Percy, Waiting for Ricky
Percy (2002–2009)
For I Will Consider My Dog Percy
The First Time Percy Came Back
Ricky Talks About Talking
The Wicked Smile
The Traveler
Show Time
A Bad Day
Henry
How a Lot of Us Become Friends
You Never Know Where a Conversation Is Going to Go
Dog Talk
Note
Credits
HOW IT BEGINS
A puppy is a puppy is a puppy.
He’s probably in a basket with a bunch
of other puppies.
Then he’s a little older and he’s nothing
but a bundle of longing.
He doesn’t even understand it.
Then someone picks him up and says,
“I want this one.”
HOW IT IS WITH US, AND HOW IT IS WITH THEM
We become religious,
then we turn from it,
then we are in need and maybe we turn back.
We turn to making money,
then we turn to the moral life,
then we think about money again.
We meet wonderful people, but lose them
in our busyness.
We’re, as the saying goes, all over the place.
Steadfastness, it seems,
is more about dogs than about us.
One of the reasons we love them so much.
IF YOU ARE HOLDING THIS BOOK
You may not agree, you may not care, but
if you are holding this book you should know
that of all the sights I love in this world—
and there are plenty—very near the top of
the list is this one: dogs without leashes.
EVERY DOG’S STORY
I have a bed, my very own.
It’s just my size.
And sometimes I like to sleep alone
with dreams inside my eyes.
But sometimes dreams are dark and wild and creepy
and I wake and am afraid, though I don’t know why.
But I’m no longer sleepy
and too slowly the hours go by.
So I climb on the bed where the light of the moon
is shining on your face
and I know it will be morning soon.
Everybody needs a safe place.
THE STORM (BEAR)
Now through the white orchard my little dog
romps, breaking the new snow
with wild feet.
Running here running there, excited,
hardly able to stop, he leaps, he spins
until the white snow is written upon
in large, exuberant letters,
a long sentence, expressing
the pleasures of the body in this world.
Oh, I could not have said it better
myself.
CONVERSATIONS
1.
Said Bear, “I know I’m supposed to keep my eye
on you, but it’s difficult the way you
lag behind and keep talking to people.”
Well, how can you be keeping your eye on me
when you’re half a mile ahead?
“True,” said Bear. “But I’m thinking of you
all the time.”
2.
I had to go away for a few days so I called
the kennel and made an appointment. I guess
Bear overheard the conversation.
“Love and company,” said Bear, “are the adornments
that change everything. I know they’ll be
nice to me, but I’ll be sad, sad, sad.”
And pitifully he wrung his paws.
I cancelled the trip.
LUKE’S JUNKYARD SONG
I was born in a junkyard,
not even on a bundle of rags
or the seat of an old wrecked car
but the dust below.
But when my eyes opened
I could crawl to the edge and see
the moving grass and the trees
and this I began to dream on,
though the worms were eating me.
And at night through the twists of metal
I could see a single star—one, not even two.
Its light was a thing of wonder,
and I learned something precious
that would also be good for you.
Though the worms kept biting and pinching
I fell in love with this star.
I stared at it every night—
that light so clear and far.
Listen, a junkyard puppy
learns quickly how to dream.
Listen, whatever you see and lo
ve—
that’s where you are.
LUKE
I had a dog
who loved flowers.
Briskly she went
through the fields,
yet paused
for the honeysuckle
or the rose,
her dark head
and her wet nose
touching
of every one
with its petals
of silk,
with its fragrance
rising
into the air
where the bees,
their bodies
heavy with pollen,
hovered—
and easily
she adored
every blossom,
not in the serious,
careful way
that we choose
this blossom or that blossom—
the way we praise or don’t praise—
the way we love
or don’t love—
but the way
we long to be—
that happy
in the heaven of earth—
that wild, that loving.
HER GRAVE
She would come back, dripping thick water, from the
green bog.
She would fall at my feet, she would draw the black skin
from her gums, in a hideous and wonderful smile—
and I would rub my hands over her pricked ears and her cunning elbows,
and I would hug the barrel of her body, amazed at the unassuming perfect arch of her neck.
It took four of us to carry her into the woods.
We did not think of music,
but anyway, it began to rain
slowly.
Her wolfish, invitational half-pounce.
Her great and lordly satisfaction at having chased something.
My great and lordly satisfaction at her splash
of happiness as she barged
through the pitch pines swiping my face with her
wild, slightly mossy tongue.
Does the hummingbird think he himself invented his crimson throat?
He is wiser than that, I think.
A dog lives fifteen years, if you’re lucky.
Do the cranes crying out in the high clouds
think it is all their own music?
A dog comes to you and lives with you in your own house, but you
do not therefore own her, as you do not own the rain, or the
trees, or the laws which pertain to them.
Does the bear wandering in the autumn up the side of the hill
think all by herself she has imagined the refuge and the refreshment
of her long slumber?
A dog can never tell you what she knows from the
smells of the world, but you know, watching her,
that you know
almost nothing.
Does the water snake with his backbone of diamonds think
the black tunnel on the bank of the pond is a palace
of his own making?
She roved ahead of me through the fields, yet would come back,
or wait for me, or be somewhere.
Now she is buried under the pines.
Nor will I argue it, or pray for anything but modesty, and
not to be angry.
Through the trees there is the sound of the wind, palavering.
The smell of the pine needles, what is it but a taste
of the infallible energies?
How strong was her dark body!
How apt is her grave place.
How beautiful is her unshakable sleep.
Finally,
the slick mountains of love break
over us.
BENJAMIN, WHO CAME FROM WHO KNOWS WHERE
What shall I do?
When I pick up the broom
he leaves the room.
When I fuss with kindling he
runs for the yard.
Then he’s back, and we
hug for a long time.
In his low-to-the-ground chest
I can hear his heart slowing down.
Then I rub his shoulders and
kiss his feet
and fondle his long hound ears.
Benny, I say,
don’t worry. I also know the way
the old life haunts the new.
THE DOG HAS RUN OFF AGAIN (BENJAMIN)
and clapping my hands,
but it has been raining all night
and the narrow creek has risen
is a tawny turbulence is rushing along
over the mossy stones
is surging forward
with a sweet loopy music
and therefore I don’t want to entangle it
with my own voice
calling summoning
my little dog to hurry back
look, the sunlight and the shadows are chasing each other
listen how the wind swirls and leaps and dives up and down
who am I to summon his hard and happy body
his four white feet that love to wheel and pedal
through the dark leaves
to come back to walk by my side, obedient.
HOLDING ON TO BENJAMIN
No use to tell him
that he
and the raccoon are brothers.
You have your soft ideas about nature
he has others,
and they are full of his
white teeth
and lip that curls, sometimes,
horribly.
You love
this earnest dog,
but also you admire the raccoon
and Lord help you in your place
of hope and improbables.
To the black-masked gray one:
Run! you say,
and just as urgently, to the dog:
Stay!
and he won’t or he will,
depending
on more things than I could name.
He’s sure he’s right
and you, so tangled in your mind,
are wrong,
though patient and pacific.
And you are downcast.
And it’s his eyes, not yours,
that are clear and bright.
THE POETRY TEACHER
The university gave me a new, elegant
classroom to teach in. Only one thing,
they said. You can’t bring your dog.
It’s in my contract, I said. (I had
made sure of that.)
We bargained and I moved to an old
classroom in an old building. Propped
the door open. Kept a bowl of water
in the room. I could hear Ben among
other voices barking, howling in the
distance. Then they would all arrive—
Ben, his pals, maybe an unknown dog
or two, all of them thirsty and happy.
They drank, they flung themselves down
among the students. The students loved
it. They all wrote thirsty, happy poems.
BAZOUGEY
Where goes he now, that dark little dog
who used to come down the road barking and shining?
He’s gone now, from the world of particulars,
the singular, the visible.
So, that deepest sting: sorrow. Still,
is he gone from us entirely, or is he
a part of that other world, everywhere?
Come with me into the woods where spring is
advancing, as it does, no matter what,
not being singular or particular, but one
of the forever gifts, and certainly visible.
See how the violets are opening, and the leaves
unfolding, the streams gleaming and the birds
singing. What does it make you think of?
His shining curls, his honest eyes, his
beautiful barking.
ROPES
IN THE OLD DAYS dogs in our town roamed freely. But the old ways changed.
One morning a puppy arrived in our yard with a length of rope hanging from his collar. He played with our dogs; eventually he vanished. But the next morning he showed up again, with a different rope attached. This happened for a number of days—he appeared, he was playful and friendly, and always accompanied by a chewed-through rope.
Just at that time we were moving to another house, which we finished doing all in one evening. A day or so later, on a hunch, I drove back to the old house and found him lying in the grass by our door. I put him in the car and showed him where our new house was. “Do your best,” I said.
He stayed around for a while, then was gone. But there he was the next morning at the new house. Rope dangling. Later that day his owner appeared—with his papers from the Bideawee home, and a leash. “His name is Sammy,” she said. “And he’s yours.”
As Sammy grew older he began to roam around the town and, as a result, began to be caught by the dog officer. Eventually, of course, we were summoned to court, which, we learned quickly, was not a place in which to argue. We were told to build a fence. Which we did.
But it turned out that Sammy could not only chew through ropes, he could also climb fences. So his roaming continued.
But except for the dog officer, Sammy never got into trouble; he made friends. He wouldn’t fight with other dogs, he just seemed to stay awhile in someone’s yard and, if possible, to say hello to the owners. People began to call us to come and get him before the dog officer saw him. Some took him into their houses to hide him from the law. Once a woman on the other end of town called; when I got there she said, “Can you wait just a few minutes? I’m making him some scrambled eggs.”