Mary Oliver is another one of the giants of poetry we lost in the past few months.
It was very difficult to pick just one Mary Oliver poem to send you today. In the days following her passing in January, it seemed like her poems, and what they meant to people, just poured out from every corner. Oliver has been described as “far and away” the best-selling poet of her time; she had a very large popular following by poetry standards.
But she was also famously snubbed by the literary establishment and poetry critics throughout her career; for instance, despite receiving the Pulitzer Prize in 1984 and the National Book Award in 1992, the New York Times never once published a full review of any of Mary Oliver’s books during her lifetime (and there were at least 28 opportunities for them to do so — Oliver was prolific). Luckily, Mary Oliver wasn’t writing for critics; she was writing for her readers — and her poems are simple and accessible by design.
When Death Comes
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 iceberg 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 a 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’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of 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.
■
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 iceberg 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 a 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’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of 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.
■
“When Death Comes” was one of the poems most circulated at the time of Mary Oliver’s passing and is referenced in pieces like Rachel Syme’s remembrance “Mary Oliver Helped Us Stay Amazed.”
I don’t usually do this, but I’m going to cheat a little bit on the “one day, one poem” premise and link you to some other Mary Oliver poems I also strongly considered sending out: “The Summer Day”, “Wild Geese”, “Don’t Hesitate”, “Anne”, and “The Whistler.”
Mary Oliver is more well-known as a nature poet than a lesbian or queer poet, but she knew how to love and to love long. She lived in Provincetwon, Massachusetts, with her partner, photographer Molly Malone Cook, for over forty years — until her partner’s passing in 2005. Mary Oliver was at home when she died of lymphoma at age 83 on January 17, 2019.
— Ellen