Try QuoteGPT
Chat naturally about what you need. Each answer links back to real quotes with citations.
Gannets I am watching the white gannets blaze down into the water with the power of blunt spears and a stunning accuracy — even though the sea is ri… - Mary Oliver
" "Gannets
I am watching the white gannets
blaze down into the water
with the power of blunt spears
and a stunning accuracy — even though the sea is riled and boiling
and gray with fog
and the fish
are nowhere to be seen,
they fall, they explode into the water
like white gloves,
then they vanish,
then they climb out again,
from the cliff of the wave,
like white flowers — and still I think
that nothing in this world moves
but as a positive power — even the fish, finning down into the current
or collapsing
in the red purse of the beak,
are only interrupted from their own pursuit
of whatever it is
that fills their bellies — and I say:
life is real,
and pain is real,
but death is an imposter,
and if I could be what once I was,
like the wolf or the bear
standing on the cold shore,
I would still see it — how the fish simply escape, this time,
or how they slide down into a black fire
for a moment,
then rise from the water inseparable
from the gannets' wings.
English
Collect this quote
About Mary Oliver
Mary Jane Oliver (10 September 1935 – 17 January 2019) was an American poet who won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.
Biography information from Wikiquote
Also Known As
Alternative Names:
Mary Jane Oliver
Related quotes. More quotes will automatically load as you scroll down, or you can use the load more buttons.
Additional quotes by Mary Oliver
Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?
SPRING Somewhere a black bear has just risen from sleep and is staring down the mountain. All night in the brisk and shallow restlessness of early spring I think of her, her four black fists flicking the gravel, her tongue like a red fire touching the grass, the cold water. There is only one question: how to love this world. I think of her rising like a black and leafy ledge to sharpen her claws against the silence of the trees. Whatever else my life is with its poems and its music and its glass cities, it is also this dazzling darkness coming down the mountain, breathing and tasting; all day I think of her — her white teeth, her wordlessness, her perfect love.
Loading...