Mary Oliver "Thirst"-Poems About Her Grief/"When Death Comes"

Thirst, a collection of fortythree new poems from Pulitzer Prizewinner Mary Oliver, introduces two new directions in the poet's work. Grappling with grief at the death of her beloved partner of over forty years, she strives to experience sorrow as a path to spiritual progress, grief as part of loving and not its end. And within these pages she chronicles for the frst time her discovery of faith, without abandoning the love of the physical world that has been a hallmark of her work for four decades.

Heavy – Mary Oliver² (Written after the death of her life-long partner)

That time

I thought I could not

go any closer to grief

without dying.

I went closer,

and I did not die.

Surley God

had His hand in this,

as well as friends.

Still I was bent,

and my laughter,

as the poet said,

was nowhere to be found.

Then said my friend Daniel

(brave even among lions),

“It is not the weight you carry

but how you carry it—

books, bricks, grief—

it’s all in the way

you embrace it, balance it, carry it

When you cannot, and would not,

put it down.”

So I went practicing.

Have you noticed?

Have you heard

the laughter

that comes, now and again,

out of my startled mouth?

How I linger

to admire, admire

the things of this world

that are kind and maybe

also troubled—

roses in the wind,

The sea geese on the steep waves,

a love

to which there is no reply?

When Death Comes –Mary Oliver (Reminds me to make the most of life, and of my mother and others who made the most of out of their lives)

When death comes

Like the hungry bear in autumn,

When death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

To buy me, and snaps the purse shut;

When death comes like the measle pox;

When death comes

Like an iceburg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:

What is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything

as a brotherhood and sisterhood,

and I look upon time as no more than an idea,

and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common

as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,

tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something

precious to the earth.

When it is over I want to say: all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it is over, I don’t want to wonder

if I have made my life something particular and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,

or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.