"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..."
In the second issue of "In Pursuit of the Sublime," a poetry project by
The Land West of Long Mountain, we read Mary Oliver's celebrated poem "The Journey" for the fierce beauty of its language and the profound power of its insight. Both wise and inspiring, but never coddling,
"The Journey" is a poem that can help guide us all, both along
the roads of the world and through the greater journey of life.
Night Descends on the Roof of the World
-Mount Everest, Tibet-
The Journey, by Mary Oliver
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.
A Poetry Project by The Land West of Long Mountain
Portrait of Windhorse Prayer Flag & Mount Kanchenjunga at Dawn
-Goecha La Pass, Sikkim, Indian Himalaya-
Spring 2018
or in New and Selected Poems: Volume One (1992)
by Mary Oliver
10 September 1935 – 17 January 2019
the “Goddess Mother of the World”
-Mount Everest Base Camp, Tibet, October 2016-
Photography by Joseph Modugno
