It's the third Thursday of the month so I'd like to welcome you to A Gathering of Poetry. We may have provided you with more poetry than you wanted during National Poetry Month in April but we're back to sharing poetry once a month. I spent an afternoon looking through my poetry books but couldn't find anything that felt right. Since I had all the poetry books out, I decided to clean and organize the bookcase. While doing that, I spied a dog-eared page in my copy of Map: Collected and Last Poems. I stopped to take a look and realized my poem for this month had found me. Cleaning the bookcase can wait.
From The Marginalian, Maria Popova |
by Wislawa Szymborska
Island where all becomes clear.
Solid ground beneath your feet.
The only roads are those that offer access.
Bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs.
The Tree of Valid Supposition grows here
with branches disentangled since time immemorial.
The Tree of Understanding, dazzlingly straight and simple,
sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It.
The thicker the woods, the vaster the vista:
the Valley of Obviously.
If any doubts arise, the wind dispels them instantly.
Echoes stir unsummoned
and eagerly explain all the secrets of the worlds.
On the right a cave where Meaning lies.
On the left the Lake of Deep Conviction.
Truth breaks from the bottom and bobs to the surface.
Unshakable Confidence towers over the valley.
Its peak offers an excellent view of the Essence of Things.
For all its charms, the island is uninhabited,
and the faint footprints scattered on its beaches
turn without exception to the sea.
As if all you can do here is leave
and plunge, never to return, into the depths.
Into unfathomable life.
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