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Thursday
Goldfinches have more or less taken over our bird feeders for the past few weeks. They don’t exactly chase away the titmice, nuthatches, and chickadees, but they make it clear that the feeders belong to them. So here’s a poem about them.
In it, Mary Oliver cites a line from one of my favorite Rilke poems. Upon viewing “An Archaic Torso of Apollo,” Rilke is dazzled by its power:
We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,gleams in all its power.
How should one respond to such an experience? Rilke has a simple and direct answer: “You must change your life.”
Oliver is so moved by this that she borrows it—or as T.S. Eliot would say, steals it—for her own ending (although at least she gives Rilke credit). Like the goldfinches, she sings her own poems “for sheer delight and gratitude”:
Invitation
by Mary Oliver
Oh do you have time
to linger
for just a little while
out of your busy
and very important day
for the goldfinches
that have gathered
in a field of thistles
for a musical battle,
to see who can sing
the highest note,
or the lowest,
or the most expressive of mirth,
or the most tender?
Their strong, blunt beaks
drink the air
as they strive
melodiously
not for your sake
and not for mine
and not for the sake of winning
but for sheer delight and gratitude –
believe us, they say,
it is a serious thing
just to be alive
on this fresh morning
in the broken world.
I beg of you,
do not walk by
without pausing
to attend to this
rather ridiculous performance.
It could mean something.
It could mean everything.
It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:
You must change your life.