after the post on happy questions last friday, i decided to ask some happy questions on twitter and it was a wonderful weekend conversation. you can find most of it by searching for #happyquestion on twitter. one of the questions was inspired by qrystal, one of the first people i ever followed on twitter (it seems so long ago now! a whole 2 ½ years!) qrystal, like i, likes poetry, so after reading one of hers i decided to ask
what poem opens your heart?
i`d like to share with you some of the responses i received:
wallace stevens’s “mozart, 1935”
rainer maria rilke`s duino elegies
w.s. merwin the rain in the trees (he reads a bit of it here in the youtube video)
leonard cohen: love itself
pablo neruda: sonnet xvii
the precious treasury of the basic space of phenomena by lonchen rabjam
clearing in the woods by l.e. sissman
sonnets to orpheus by rainer maria rilke
rudyard kipling`s if
dr. seuss’s lorax (that was mine)
mary oliver`s the journey is the one i`m reprinting here:
the journey
one day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“mend my life!”
each voice cried.
but you didn’t stop.
you knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
it was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
but little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.
what poem opens your heart?