I can’t say much more, except that it all happened
in silence and peaceful simplicity, and something that felt
like the bliss of a certainty and a life lived
in accordance with that certainty.
I must remember this, I thought, as we fly back
to America.
Pray God I remember this.
NOTE
The poem “For I Will Consider My Dog Percy” is obviously derivative of Christopher Smart’s poem “For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffry.” It is in no way an imitation except in style. Jeoffry wins entirely. But for a few days I simply stood upon the shoulders of that wondrous poem and began to think about Percy.
The lines in italics, except for the exchange of names and altering of verb tense from present to past, are Christopher Smart’s own, and in that way are acknowledged to be so.
M. O.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks to the editors of the following publications in which the listed poems previously appeared, some in slightly different form.
APPALACHIA: “Foolishness? No, It’s Not”; “The Instant”
BARK: “The First Time Percy Came Back”
FIVE POINTS: “Hum, Hum”; “Poem of the One World”
THE NEW YORK TIMES: “Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness”
ORION: “Life Story”
PARABOLA: “I Go Down to the Shore”; “After I Fall Down the Stairs at the Golden Temple”; “If I Were”; “And Bob Dylan Too”; “The Morning Paper”
PORTLAND: “Today”
SHENANDOAH: “Out of the Stump Rot Something”
SELECT TITLES ALSO BY MARY OLIVER
POETRY
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