Deep words

Stumbled upon these from other bloggers' sites and thought it too lovely to not immortalize on my site as well, especially since I do not typically pick up poetry books and will definitely not come across them on my own. I find most poetry perplexing –– I think I'm too impatient to mull over the words. So I get very excited when poetry readers share gems like these that I can easily decipher :-)

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.


I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down


into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,


how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,


which is what I have been doing all day.


Tell me, what else should I have done?


Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?


Tell me, what is it you plan to do


with your one wild and precious life?”

– "The Summer Day" by Mary Oliver

(found via Maps & Fragments)

All I have is a voice

To undo the folded lie,

The romantic lie in the brain

Of the sensual man-in-the-street

And the lie of Authority

Whose buildings grope the sky:

There is no such thing as the State

And no one exists alone;

Hunger allows no choice

To the citizen or the police;

We must love one another or die.

– W.H. Auden

(Can't remember where I saw this, but it definitely spoke to the quixotic part of me)