You are currently browsing the monthly archive for December 2011.
I love the joyful enthusiasm of this household.
Despite the hint of lower economic status suggested by their location next to a convenience store on a busy avenue, they cheer us every year with the “reckless exuberance” of their Xmas lights.
Blessèd be,
Michael
In Praise of Self-Deprecation
by Wislawa Szymborska (born 1923)
The buzzard has nothing to fault himself with.
Scruples are alien to the black panther.
Piranhas do not doubt the rightness of their actions.
The rattlesnake approves of himself without reservations.
The self-critical jackal does not exist.
The locust, alligator, trichina, horsefly
live as they live and are glad of it.
The killer whale’s heart weighs one hundred kilos
but in other respects it is light.
There is nothing more animal-like
than a clear conscience
on the third planet of the Sun.
—translated from the Polish
by Magnus J. Krynski and Robert A. McGuire,
republished in A book of Luminous Things:
An International Anthology of Poetry,
edited by Czeslaw Milosz
Thanks to Wendy for sharing this poem.
Some Questions You Might Ask
by Mary Oliver
Is the soul solid, like iron?
Or is it tender and breakable, like
the wings of a moth in the beak of an owl?
Who has it, and who doesn’t?
I keep looking around me.
The face of the moose is as sad
as the face of Jesus.
The swan opens her white wings slowly.
In the fall, the black bear carries leaves into the darkness.
One question leads to another.
Does it have a shape? Like an iceberg?
Like the eye of a hummingbird?
Does it have one lung, like the snake and the scallop?
Why should I have it, and not the anteater
who loves her children?
Why should I have it, and not the camel?
Come to think of it, what about maple trees?
What about the blue iris?
What about all the little stones, sitting alone in the moonlight?
What about roses, and lemons, and their shining leaves?
What about the grass?
—Published in House of Light
and New and Selected Poems, Volume 1
Thanks to Wendy for sharing this poem.
