Scribbled Lives Week 37—Mary Oliver

So many Mary Oliver poems speak to me that it was a challenge to choose.

‘A Bitterness’ is not the kind of text I’m normally drawn to, but after several days of poring over her work, I kept returning to this poem. After researching her life and learning of the trauma she suffered in childhood, I came to understand the context of this dark and powerful text.

A Bitterness

I believe you did not have a happy life.
I believe you were cheated.
I believe your best friends were loneliness and misery.
I believe your busiest enemies were anger and depression.
I believe joy was a game you could never play without stumbling.
I believe comfort, though you craved it, was forever a stranger.
I believe music had to be melancholy or not at all.
I believe no trinket, no precious metal, shone so bright as your bitterness.
I believe you lay down at last in your coffin none the wiser and unassuaged.
Oh, cold and dreamless under the wild, amoral, reckless, peaceful flowers of the hillsides.

Mary Oliver

After three efforts, I still managed to misspell a word; however, Kalliandra alphabet is a very forgiving alphabet. ‘Dreamless’ now has an ‘a’!

Pointed pen, sumi ink, and fineliner on cream watercolour paper.