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.
— Mary Oliver (Dream Work)
Read: Maria Shriver Interviews the Famously Private Poet Mary Oliver.
Others: Five A.M. in the Pinewoods (House of Light) Mindful (Why I Wake Early)
Wild Geese by Mary Oliver, photo by Ken West
See It Is I Who Must Begin by Václav Havel. It shares a similar sentiment.
See this remembrance of Mary Oliver with links to more of her poems.
The Uncarved Blog 
February 28, 2013 at 12:11 pm |
I love this! Read it out loud while listening to this: http://youtu.be/FcdOLKx2XG8
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March 1, 2013 at 10:33 am |
Kinda divides the mind, Nate.
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June 23, 2014 at 1:32 pm |
[…] poems: The Journey by Mary Oliver | Wild Geese by Mary Oliver, photo by Ken West | Varanasi by Mary Oliver in A […]
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June 23, 2014 at 1:32 pm |
[…] poems: The Journey by Mary Oliver | Wild Geese by Mary Oliver, photo by Ken West | Varanasi by Mary Oliver in A […]
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September 21, 2014 at 1:21 am |
[…] Here is a National Endowment For The Humanities interview with Wendell E. Berry, Awards & Honors: 2012 Jefferson Lecturer. These poems by Walcott, O’Donohue, Hafiz, and Oliver complement Berry’s theme: Love after Love, by Derek Walcott, A Blessing of Solitude by John O’Donohue, The Root of The Rose by Hafiz, translated by Daniel Ladinsky, and The Journey by Mary Oliver. […]
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May 27, 2015 at 11:38 am |
[…] Enjoy these other lovely poems by Mary Oliver: Summer Day, Varanasi, Praying, Wild Geese, and The Journey. […]
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May 27, 2015 at 6:32 pm |
[…] Some of Mary Oliver’s poems are exquisite. Mary Oliver’s transcendent experience at the lake, put into words, might leave you breathless. Enjoy these other lovely poems by Mary Oliver: Summer Day, Varanasi, Praying, Wild Geese, and The Journey. […]
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January 26, 2017 at 1:08 am |
[…] reminds me of Mary Oliver’s poem, The Journey, where leaving home is necessary to “save the only life you could save” and discover […]
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January 15, 2019 at 7:29 pm |
[…] read The Journey by Mary Oliver, I found a poem by David Whyte with the same title. Oliver’s poem is about leaving her […]
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January 20, 2019 at 1:14 am |
[…] few of her other astonishing poems on my blog. Here they are listed in the order I discovered them: The Journey, Wild Geese, Praying, Varanasi, Summer Day, At the Lake, One, White Owl Flies Into And Out Of The […]
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September 23, 2022 at 9:41 pm |
This poem about leaving home early in her life to save and find herself contrasts with her poem Coming Home written much later in her life. https://theuncarvedblog.com/2022/07/15/coming-home-by-mary-oliver/
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