Wild Geese

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.

-Mary Oliver

……………..

(Thank you Mr. R for introducing me to this wonderful poet. I will be forever grateful.)

Lips That Touch Liquor Shall Never Touch Mine

Alice Lee stood awaiting her lover one night,
Her cheeks flushed and glowing, her eyes full of light.
She had placed a sweet rose ‘mid her wild flowing hair;
No flower of the forest e’er looked half so fair
As she did that night, as she stood by the door
Of the cot where she dwelt by the side of the moor.

She heard a quick step coming over the moor,
And a merry voice which she had oft heard before;
And ere she could speak a strong arm held her fast,
And a manly voice whispered, “I’ve come, love, at last.
I’m sorry that I’ve kept you waiting like this,
But I know you’ll forgive me, then give me a kiss.”

But she shook the bright curls on her beautiful head,
And she drew herself up while quite proudly she said,
“Now, William, I’ll prove if you really are true,
For you say that you love me — I don’t think you do;
If really you love me you must give up the wine,
For the lips that touch liquor shall never touch mine.”

He looked quite amazed, “Why, Alice, ’tis clear
You really are getting quite jealous, my dear.”
“In that you are right,” she replied; “for, you see,
You’ll soon love the liquor far better than me.
I’m jealous, I own, of the poisonous wine,
For the lips that touch liquor shall never touch mine.”

He turned, then, quite angry. “Confound it!” he said,
“What nonsense you’ve got in your dear little head;
But I’ll see if I cannot remove it from hence.”
She said, “‘Tis not nonsense, ’tis plain common-sense:
And I mean what I say, and this you will find,
I don’t often change when I’ve made up my mind.”

He stood all irresolute, angry, perplexed:
She never before saw him look half so vexed;
But she said, “If he talks all his life I won’t flinch”;
And he talked, but he never could move her an inch.
He then bitterly cried, with a look and a groad,
“O Alice, your heart is as hard as a stone.”

But though her heart beat in his favour quite loud,
She still firmly kept to the vow she had vowed;
And at last, without even a tear or sigh,
She said, “I am going, so, William, goodbye.”
“Nay stay,” he then said, “I’ll choose one of the two —
I’ll give up the liquor in favour of you.”

Now, William had often great cause to rejoice
For the hour he had made sweet Alice his choice;
And he blessed through the whole of a long, useful life,
The fate that had given him his dear little wife.
And she, by her firmness, won to us that night
One who in our cause is an ornament bright.

Oh! that each fair girl in our abstinence band
Would say: “I’ll ne’er give my heart or my hand
Unto one who I ever had reason to think
Would taste one small drop of the vile, cursed drink”;
But say, when you are wooed, “I’m a foe to the wine,
And the lips that touch liquor shall never touch mine.”

Harriet A Glazebrook (1876)

*************

Apparently an hour of Alice Lee’s pussy rehabilitated William.  Yeah, sure.  Tell that to Doctor Bob.

*rolls eyes*

I’m sure this poem references the Temperance Movement. And here’s a book of Ms. Glazebrook’s poetry available at Amazon.

On Beauty

Kahlil Gibran

Where shall you seek beauty, and how shall you find her unless she herself be your way and your guide?
And how shall you speak of her except she be the weaver of your speech?

The aggrieved and the injured say, “Beauty is kind and gentle.
Like a young mother half-shy of her own glory she walks among us.”
And the passionate say, “Nay, beauty is a thing of might and dread.
Like the tempest she shakes the earth beneath us and the sky above us.”

The tired and the weary say, “Beauty is of soft whisperings. She speaks in our spirit.
Her voice yields to our silences like a faint light that quivers in fear of the shadow.”
But the restless say, “We have heard her shouting among the mountains,
And with her cries came the sound of hoofs, and the beating of wings and the roaring of lions.”

At night the watchmen of the city say, “Beauty shall rise with the dawn from the east.”
And at noontide the toilers and the wayfarers say,
“We have seen her leaning over the earth from the windows of the sunset.”

In winter say the snow-bound, “She shall come with the spring leaping upon the hills.”
And in the summer heat the reapers say,
“We have seen her dancing with the autumn leaves,
and we saw a drift of snow in her hair.”
All these things have you said of beauty,
Yet in truth you spoke not of her but of needs unsatisfied,
And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.
It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth,
But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted.

It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear,
But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears.
It is not the sap within the furrowed bark, nor a wing attached to a claw,
But rather a garden for ever in bloom and a flock of angels for ever in flight.

People of Orphalese, beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.
But you are life and you are the veil.
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
But you are eternity and you are the mirror.

*************
*************

visual feminine beatitudes