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"A Walk in the Country" To walk anywhere in the world, to live now, to speak, to breathe a harmless breath: what snowflake, even, may try today so c… - William Stafford
"A Walk in the Country"
To walk anywhere in the world, to live
now, to speak, to breathe a harmless
breath: what snowflake, even, may try
today so calm a life,
so mild a death?
Out in the country once,
walking the hollow night,
I felt a burden of silver come:
my back had caught moonlight
pouring through the trees like money.
That walk was late, though.
Late, I gently came into town,
and a terrible thing had happened:
the world, wide, unbearably bright,
had leaped on me. I carried mountains.
Though there was much I knew, though
kind people turned away,
I walked there ashamed — into that still picture
to bring my fear and pain.
By dawn I felt all right;
my hair was covered with dew;
the light was bearable; the air
came still and cool.
And God had come back there
to carry the world again.
Since then, while over the world
the wind appeals events,
and people contend like fools,
like a stubborn tumbleweed I hold,
hold where I live, and look into every face:
Oh friends, where can one find a partner
for the long dance over the fields?
English
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Additional quotes by William Stafford
"Afterwards
Mostly you look back and say, "Well, OK. Things might have been different, sure, and it's not too bad, but look - things happen like that, and you did what you could."
You go back and pick up the pieces. There's tomorrow. There's that long bend in the river on the way home. Fluffy bursts of milkweed are floating through shafts of sunlight or disappearing where trees reach out from their deep dark roots.
Maybe people have to go in and out of shadows till they learn that floating, that immensity waiting to receive whatever arrives with trust. Maybe somebody has to explore what happens when one of us wanders over near the edge and falls for awhile. Maybe it was your turn."
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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.
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