William Stafford Quotes

"I Have a Witness"

Sometimes a center the soul can recognize
will speak from anywhere , inside a mountain, or from
a whirlwind ... The world can take, the soul
restores. A million wrong voices proclaim
One light lives forever.

Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say. — William Stafford, “Ask Me,” Ask Me; 100 Essential Poems of William Stafford (Graywolf Press, January 7th 2014)

Sending These Messages

Over these writings I bent my head.
Now you are considering them. If you
Turn away I will look up: a bridge
That was there will be gone.
For the rest of your life I will stand here,
Reaching across.

If these writings can bring a turn
Or an echo that touches you-maybe
A face, a slant, a tune- you will stop
Too and bend over them. When you
Look up, your thought will reach
Wherever I am.

I know it is strange. And there’s no measure
For this. The only connection we make
Is a like a twinge when sometimes they change
The beat in music, and we sprawl with it
And hear another world for a minute
That is almost there.

The Poets’ Annual Indigence Report”

Tonight beyond the determined moon,
aloft with nothing left that is voluntary
for delight, everything uttering hydrogen,
your thinkers are mincing along through a hail of contingencies,

While we all–floating though we are, lonesome though we are,
lost in hydrogen–we live by seems things:
when things just are, then something else
will be doing the living.

Doing is not enough; being is not enough;
knowing is far from enough. So we clump around, putting
feet on the dazzle floor, awaiting the real schedule
by celebrating the dazzle schedule.

And, whatever is happening, we are here;
a lurch or a god has brought us together.
We do our jobs–listening in fear
in endless, friendless, Jesus-may-happen fashion.

Our shadows ride over the grass, your shadows, ours: –
Rich men, wise men, be our contemporaries.

How to Regain Your Soul

Come down Canyon Creek trail on a summer afternoon
that one place where the valley floor opens out. You will see
the white butterflies. Because of the way shadows
come off those vertical rocks in the west, there are
shafts of sunlight hitting the river and a deep
long purple gorge straight ahead. Put down your pack.

Above, air sighs the pines. It was this way
when Rome was clanging, when Troy was being built,
when campfires lighted caves. The white butterflies dance
by the thousands in the still sunshine. Suddenly, anything
could happen to you. Your soul pulls toward the canyon
and then shines back through the white wings to be you again.

Love in the Country

We live like this: no one but
some of the owls awake, and of them
only near ones really awake.
In the rain yesterday, puddles
on the walk to the barn sounded their
quick little drinks.

The edge of the haymow, all
soaked in moonlight,
dreams out there like silver music.
Are there farms like this where
no one likes to live?

And the sky going everywhere?
While the earth breaks the soft horizon
eastward, we study how to deserve
what has already been given us

"With Neighbors One Afternoon

Someone said, stirring their tea, "I would
come home any time just for this,
to look out the clear backyard air
and then into the cup."

You could see the tiniest pattern of bark on the trees
and every slight angle of color change
in the sunshine — millions of miles of gold light
lavished on people like us.

You could put out your hand and feel the rush of years
rounding your life into these days of ours.
From somewhere a leaf came gliding slowly down
and rested on the lawn.

Remember that scene? — inside it you folded the last
of your jealousy and hate and all those deeds so hard
to forget. Absolution: swish! — you took,
the past into your mouth,

And swallowed it, warm, thin, bitter and good."

Always write in the wilderness.

Representing Far Places

In the canoe wilderness branches wait for winter;
every leaf concentrates; a drop from the paddle falls.
Up through water at the dip of a falling leaf
to the sky's drop of light or the smell of another star
fish in the lake leap arcs of realization,
hard fins prying out from the dark below.
Often in society when the talk turns witty
you think of that place, and can't polarize at all:
it would be a kind of treason. The land fans in your head
canyon by canyon; steep roads diverge.
Representing far places you stand in the room,
all that you know merely a weight in the weather.
It is all right to be simply the way you have to be,
among contradictory ridges in some crescendo of knowing.

Even the upper end of the river
believes in the ocean.

Malheur Before Dawn
An owl sound wandered along the road with me.
I didn’t hear it- I breathed it into my ears.

Little ones at first, the stars retired, leaving
Polished little circles on the sky for a while.

Then the sun began to shout from below the horizon.
Throngs of birds campaigned, their music a tent of song.

From across a pond, out of the mist,
One drake made a V and said its name.

Some vast animal of air began to rouse
From the reeds and lean outward.

Frogs discovered their national anthem again.
I didn’t know a ditch could hold so much joy.

So magic a time it was that I was both brave and afraid.
Some day like this might save the world.

"Waking At 3 a.m."

Even in the cave of the night when you
wake and are free and lonely,
neglected by others, discarded, loved only
by what doesn’t matter — even in that
big room no one can see,
you push with your eyes till forever
comes in its twisted figure eight
and lies down in your head.

You think water in the river;
you think slower than the tide in
the grain of the wood; you become
a secret storehouse that saves the country,
so open and foolish and empty.

You look over all that the darkness
ripples across. More than has ever
been found comforts you. You open your
eyes in a vault that unlocks as fast
and as far as your thought can run.
A great snug wall goes around everything,
has always been there, will always
remain. It is a good world to be
lost in. It comforts you. It is
all right. And you sleep.

Dandelion cavalry, light little saviors,
baffle the wind, they ride so light.
They surround a church and outside the window
utter their deaf little cry: “If you listen
well, music won’t have to happen.”

After service they depart singly
to mention in the world their dandelion faith:
'God is not big; He is right.

Allegiances

It is time for all the heroes to go home
if they have any, time for all of us common ones
to locate ourselves by the real things
we live by.

Far to the north, or indeed in any direction,
strange mountains and creatures have always lurked–
elves, goblins, trolls, and spiders:-we
encounter them in dread and wonder,

But once we have tasted far streams, touched the gold,
found some limit beyond the waterfall,
a season changes, and we come back, changed
but safe, quiet, grateful.

Suppose an insane wind holds all the hills
while strange beliefs whine at the traveler’s ears,
we ordinary beings can cling to the earth and love
where we are, sturdy for common things.

Always do your writing in the wilderness.