Chet Raymo, “Trying To Be Good”
by Chet Raymo
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.”
That was a journey of more than a hundred miles, and I was busy repenting, although of what I don’t know.
As I read those lines from Mary Oliver in middle age, I had long been cultivating the “soft animal” within, immersing myself in the is-ness of things, the flesh and blood, the gorgeously sensual. No more walking on my knees, repenting. I walked proudly upright, with my sketchbook and my watercolors, my binoculars and my magnifier, sniffing the world like an animal on the prowl. I was letting my body learn to “love what it loves.” Those were the years I wrote “The Soul of the Night” and “Honey From Stone” – the most intensely creative years of my life. The world offered itself to my imagination, if I may borrow another line from “Wild Geese.”
And now, another half-lifetime has passed. The soft animal dozes, the body seeks repose. And I think of the first line quoted above: “You do not have to be good.” What could the poet have possibly meant by that? Of course one has to be good. In a cell at Gethsemane or on the bridge over Queset Brook, one has to be good. And so one tries, one tries. The soft animal of the body that nature has contrived for us is not fine-tuned for goodness.”
by Mary Oliver
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
Source: http://coyoteprime-runningcauseicantfly.blogspot.com/2018/12/chet-raymo-trying-to-be-good.html
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