No doubt in Holland,
when Van Gogh was a boy,
there were swans drifting
over the green sea
of the meadows, and no doubt
on some warm afternoon
he lay down and watched them,
and almost though: this is everything.
What drove him to get up and look further
is what saves this world,
even as it breaks
the hearts of men.
In the mines where he preached,
where he studied tenderness,
there were only men, all of them
streaked with dust.
For years he would reach
toward the darkness.
But no doubt, like all of us,
he finally remembered
everything, including the white birds,
weightless and unaccountable,
floating around the towns
of grit and hopelessness—
and this is what would finish him:
no t=the gloom, which was only terrible,
but those last yellow fields, where clearly
nothing in the world mattered, or ever would
but the insensible light.-Everything by Mary Oliver
Charlottesville, VA 2011
Thanks, K.
