William Stafford Quotes

"Scars"

They tell how it was, and how time
came along, and how it happened
again and again. They tell
the slant life takes when it turns
and slashes your face as a friend.

Any wound is real. In church
a woman lets the sun find
her cheek, and we see the lesson:
there are years in that book; there are sorrows
a choir can't reach when they sing.

Rows of children lift their faces of promise,
places where the scars will be.

William Stafford, Americans’ Favorite Poems edited by Maggie Dietz and Robert Pinsky (W. W. Norton & Company; 1st edition, November 1, 1999)

Holding the Sky

We saw a town by the track in Colorado.
Cedar trees below has sifted the air,
Snow water foamed the torn river there,
And a lost road went climbing the slope like a ladder.

We were traveling between a mountain and Thursday,
Holding pages back on the calendar,
Remembering every turn in the roadway:
We hold that sky, we said, and remember.

On the western slope we crashed into Thursday.
So long, you said when the train stopped there.
Snow was falling, touching in the air.
Those dark mountains have never wavered.

"They miss the whisper that runs
any day in your mind,
"Who are you really, wanderer?" — and the answer you have to give
no matter how dark and cold
the world around you is:
"Maybe I'm a king.

"Sometimes from sorrow, for no reason,
you sing.

from "Cutting Loose

Lorene — we thought she’d come home. But it got late, and then days. Now it has been years. Why shouldn’t she, if she wanted? I would: something comes along, a sunny day, you start walking; you meet a person who says, “Follow me,” and things lead on. Usually, it wouldn’t happen, but sometimes the neighbors notice your car is gone, the patch of oil in the driveway, and it fades. They forget. In the Bible it happened — fishermen, Levites. They just went away and kept going. Thomas, away off in India, never came back. But Lorene — it was a stranger maybe, and he said, “Your life, I need it.” And nobody else did.

How far friends are! They forget you,
most days. They have to, I know; but still,
it’s lonely just being far and a friend.
I put my hand out — this chair, this table — so near: touch, that’s how to live.
Call up a friend? All right, but the phone
itself is what loves you, warm on your ear,
on your hand. Or, you lift a pen
to write — it’s not that far person
but this familiar pen that comforts.
Near things: Friend, here’s my hand. — William Stafford, “Friends,” The Way It Is. (Graywolf Press, 1998)

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

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, 1998)

After Arguing Against The Contention That Art Must Come From Discontent

Whispering to each handhold, “I'll be back,”
I go up the cliff in the dark. One place
I loosen a rock and listen a long time
till it hits, faint in the gulf, but the rush
of the torrent almost drowns it out, and the wind — I almost forgot the wind: it tears at your side
or it waits and then buffets; you sag outward. . . .

I remember they said it would be hard. I scramble
by luck into a little pocket out of
the wind and begin to beat on the stones
with my scratched numb hands, rocking back and forth
in silent laughter there in the dark — “Made it again!” Oh how I love this climb! — the whispering to stones, the drag, the weight
as your muscles crack and ease on, working
right. They are back there, discontent,
waiting to be driven forth. I pound
on the earth, riding the earth past the stars:
“Made it again! Made it again!

"Our Story"

Remind me again — together we
trace our strange journey, find
each other, come on laughing.
Some time we’ll cross where life
ends. We’ll both look back
as far as forever, that first day.
I’ll touch you — a new world then.
Stars will move a different way.
We’ll both end. We’ll both begin.

Remind me again.

Always write in the wilderness.

Before you have your dreams, your dreams have you, and every day pushes a night before it while the wilderness follows.

Cutting Loose”

Sometimes from sorrow, for no reason,
you sing. For no reason, you accept
the way of being lost, cutting loose
from all else and electing a world
where you go where you want to.

Arbitrary, a sound comes, a reminder
that a steady center is holding
all else. If you listen, that sound
will tell where it is, and you
can slide your way past trouble.

Certain twisted monsters
always bar the path – but that’s when
you get going best, glad to be lost,
learning how real it is
here on the earth, again and again.

Wisdom is having things right in your life and knowing why. If you do not have things right in your life you will be overwhelmed: you may be heroic, but you will not be wise. If you have things right in your life but do not know why, you are just lucky, and you will not move in the little ways that encourage good fortune.

Assurance You will never be alone, you hear so deep a sound when autumn comes. Yellow pulls across the hills and thrums, or the silence after lightning before it says its names — and then the clouds’ wide-mouthed apologies. You were aimed from birth: you will never be alone. Rain will come, a gutter filled, an Amazon, long aisles — you never heard so deep a sound, moss on rock, and years. You turn your head — that’s what the silence meant: you’re not alone. The whole wide world pours down.