This evening, at a dinner party in Paris, I learned about Mary Oliver. I learned that she had existed, that she had been a poet whose work was beloved by several of the people in the room, and that she had passed away only three days ago.<\/p>\n
So this evening I went on-line and read through much of her poetry, and found it to be deeply moving and inspirational. I will share with you this one, called “The Journey”, which speaks to me in a particularly profound way:<\/p>\n
One day you finally knew
\nwhat you had to do, and began,
\nthough the voices around you
\nkept shouting
\ntheir bad advice–
\nthough the whole house
\nbegan to tremble
\nand you felt the old tug
\nat your ankles.
\n“Mend my life!”
\neach voice cried.
\nBut you didn’t stop.
\nYou knew what you had to do,
\nthough the wind pried
\nwith its stiff fingers
\nat the very foundations,
\nthough their melancholy
\nwas terrible.
\nIt was already late
\nenough, and a wild night,
\nand the road full of fallen
\nbranches and stones.
\nBut little by little,
\nas you left their voices behind,
\nthe stars began to burn
\nthrough the sheets of clouds,
\nand there was a new voice
\nwhich you slowly
\nrecognized as your own,
\nthat kept you company
\nas you strode deeper and deeper
\ninto the world,
\ndetermined to do
\nthe only thing you could do–
\ndetermined to save
\nthe only life you could save.
\n<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This evening, at a dinner party in Paris, I learned about Mary Oliver. I learned that she had existed, that she had been a poet whose work was beloved by several of the people in the room, and that she had passed away only three days ago. So this evening I went on-line and read … Continue reading “This evening, at a dinner party in Paris”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20730"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20730"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20733,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20730\/revisions\/20733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}