I Will Not Visit This World

“When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.”

Unknown

2 Comments on “I Will Not Visit This World”

  • mike

    says:

    That would be “When Death Comes” by Mary Oliver, poet. She is now the Margaret Bannister Writer in Residence at Sweet Briar College in Virginia. Here is an url:
    http://www.globalideasbank.org/LA/LA-2.HTML

  • mike

    says:

    That would be “When Death Comes” by Mary Oliver

    When Death Comes
    by Mary Oliver

    When death comes
    like the hungry bear in autumn;
    when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

    to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
    when death comes
    like the measle-pox:

    when death comes
    like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

    I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering
    what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

    And therefore I look upon everything
    as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
    and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
    and I consider eternity as another possibility,

    and I think of each life as a flower, as common
    as a field daisy, and as singular,

    and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
    tending, as all music does, toward silence,

    and each body a lion of courage, and something
    precious to the earth.

    When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
    I was a bride married to amazement.
    I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

    When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
    if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
    I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
    or full of argument.

    I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

    — Mary Oliver

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