sharing something that helps me go on

[mahoganylvr]

i wanted to share this poem that helps me a ton when i'm feeling like the world is crashing down on me and nothing will ever get better.

Sunrise by Louise Gluck

This time of year, the window boxes smell of the hills,
the thyme and rosemary that grew there,
crammed into the narrow spaces between the rocks
and, lower down, where there was real dirt,
competing with other things, blueberries and currants,
the small shrubby trees the bees love—
Whatever we ate smelled of the hills,
even when there was almost nothing.
Or maybe that's what nothing tastes like, thyme and rosemary.


Maybe, too, that's what it looks like—
beautiful, like the hills, the rocks above the tree line
webbed with sweet smelling herbs,
the small plants glittering with dew—


It was a big event to climb up there and wait for dawn,
seeing what the sun sees as it slides out from behind the rocks,
and what you couldn't see, you imagined;


your eyes would go as far as they could, to the river, say,
and your mind would do the rest—


And if you missed a day, there was always the next,
and if you missed a year, it didn't matter,
the hills weren't going anywhere,
the thyme and rosemary kept coming back,
the sun kept rising, the bushes kept bearing fruit—


The streetlight's off: that's dawn here.
It's on: that's twilight.
Either way, no one looks up. Everyone just pushes ahead,
and the smell of the past is everywhere,
the thyme and rosemary rubbing against your clothes,
the smell of too many illusions—


Between them, the hills and sky took up all the room.
Whatever was left, that was ours for a while.
But eventually the hills will take it back, give it to the animals.
And maybe the moon will send the seas there,
and where we lived will be a stream or river coiling around the base of the hills,
paying the sky the compliment of reflection.


I went back but I didn't stay.
Everyone I cared about was gone,
some dead, some disappeared into one of those places that don't exist,
the ones we dreamed about because we saw them from the top of the hills—
I had to see if the fields were still shining,
the sun telling the same lies about how beautiful the world is
when all you need to know of a place is, do people live there.
If they do, you know everything.


The hills are terrible, they hide the truth of the past.
Green in summer, white when the snow falls.

 

[rllysuper]

it's a beautiful poem, thank you sm for sharing : ))

 

[The_Hunter]

i wanted to share this poem that helps me a ton when i'm feeling like the world is crashing down on me and nothing will ever get better.

Damn... this is so, so beautiful. Thank you so much for this amazing poem!

Reminds me of certain pieces of dialogue from a game called Rain World.

Behold this empty husk of a land...
Populated only by storms, ruins and abominations. It wasn't always thus.
I was once the Count of 2 living blocks, esteemed by my peers. I had progeny!
From within my vessel of flesh, I would perch upon this spot to observe the rising of the sun.
Corporeal matters seem so distant now. Most have forgotten this place, but I remain.
Perhaps I reminisce because I cannot go. Perhaps I cannot go because memory traps me here.

Do you hear it, little one?
The buzzing in the air?
The endless chatter of a thousand thousand voices, long dead?
They are gone, and yet they speak. Neither here nor there.
Does that seem familiar? Yes, it is quite amusing for a being in my predicament!

Strange...
Something still draws me here. Even after all this time.
The weather is so different now, but the fields...
I do not need eyes to know that the grasses still sway gently in the winds.
To have grasped at the boundless infinites of the cosmic void...
Yet here I am contemplating these same fields as I once did, talking to some sort of rodent.

 

[CatLvr]

That is beautiful. Thank you for sharing.

 

[spero_meliora]

Echoing the sentiments of others here - this is really beautiful