Mary Oliver
EVERYTHING
No doubt in Holland,
when van Gogh was a boy,
there were swans drifting
over the green sea
ofthe meadows, and no doubt
on some warm afternoon
he lay down and watched them,
and almost thought: this is everything.
What drove him
to
get up and look further
is what saves this world,
even as it breaks
the hearts of men.
In the mines where he preached,
where he studied tenderness,
there were only men , all of them
streaked with dust.
For years he would reach
toward the darkness.
But no doubt, like
all
of us,
he finally remembered
everything, including the white birds,
weightless and unaccountable,
floating around the towns
ofgrit and hopelessness-
and this is what would finish him:
not the gloom, which was only terrible,
but those last yellow fields, where clearly
nothing in the world mattered, or ever would,
but the insensible light.
