by Mary Oppen
I remained myself and I forgot myself
My face rested on my lover:
Everything stopped, and I was outside myself
Leaving me watched over
Forgotten among Mary’s lilies.
It Is a Life
1
It is a life
mind takes me where it will go
happy?
strange full of doubts and fears
shakes my love for myself
something happens to me
a stumbling
concealed from view or flashing
deep hidden
my own powers frighten me
BEGIN
(my voice in my dream)
strangers
apprentices
wandering to perfect our skills
disaster draws us and a kind of happiness
I borrow my first breath
ancestors sound in my voice
but what I see and what I feel
happens to me
concealed from view or flashing
the occulting light leaves me in darkness
but the door I push
opens toward me
2
as a bird
a place her own
to which she will return
“but I have no home
for I have set on fire the forest
in which I was enchanted”
a stranger
as were all my mothers
ask
this path
now
receive an answer in sleep
what thickening fog tears my gaze from myself
where all the silenced
speak in my voice
shake my love for myself
but deep within
“the forest shimmers in a lovely light”
deer run wild in
words of beauty
she finds her soul with words
Love for another has shaken and
perhaps destroyed
herself
part of herself
left behind a stranger
no remembering
rid be rid of those lapsed images
impostures
dreams and words
in sleep she disappears
she tells it
it changes
but what has been is not entirely gone
herself she takes forward
Love for another has shaken
perhaps destroyed
herself different
herself left behind
no remembering
rid be rid lapsed images impostures
dreams and words she disappears
in sleep
she tells
it changes but it is not entirely gone it
is herself she takes forward
our boat makes a way for us
it is a free passage
held in the surges
or standing on the sea of glass
our words move toward
each other
I come as a guest
entering my own life
and the tree that leans lends
me its strength
what my mothers said,
the dreams
I disappear into in sleep
in safety I dream danger
I open my eyes
startled that I am safe
we walk in autumn stubble
the field not ours
small houses unfurnished empty
we enter
and it is our home
Mother and Daughter and the Sea
no sign of their paths through the air
from ancient times birds know the paths of birds
twisting their necks cropping new growth
running stretching their necks flying looking about
enticing their young to flight
a daughter a shadow outside
herself a troubled river
lovely and comely she stands by the river
her darkness amazes
her hidden darkness a vine in her blood
turning again she broods on that strange vineyard
the mother in her blood
like a wild vine and the tree said to the vine
Come!
silent her words are a burden
caught by the spinner
in the web she has surmised
love as a leaf drops
beyond the river
springs rise
brooks in the hills river in the valley
sun and air dark and her darkness
dark
shore sand and rock
a reedy place a woodland
and the river
nears the sea
as the river flows
I walk the years
in the sedges by the river I walk
I bare my legs cross over the river
as dawn lights the way
warning lights on mountain tops
lights of cities
but I have no path the common
hope of my generation
is disenchanted violent
wind carries a leaf
and a wind answers
Conversation
silent
no bird moves a wing
no bird
moves
in my own darkness obscure
secret places
shadowy sombre sometimes
afraid
from darkness a glitter
luminous opens
we talk we hold
the key
Muse
like a bird flying through the air
the path of her flight is not to be found
she steps out of my presence
brings no word
her lips move but she is silent
hand covering her mouth
she turns
looks back
belongs to no-one
I grope at noon-day
as if I have no eyes
the door that was open
closes
I hide in secret
dark although the key
is in my hand
Is there a woman who knows her own way
as a bird folds her wings
or makes her way by flying
in the way of birds
the bird the singing
bird has not asked long
life deep
deep my center’s in a sphere
no eyes no hands no wings no time no space
outside myself the way was long
in flight we met
noise of the wings of living creatures
sound of beating wings
we met and found
ourselves in flight
and now I’d say
the wings were love
Mary Oppen (1908–1990) was born in Kalispell, Montana, and spent her adolescence in the Pacific Northwest. She was a writer, artist, and activist, and the lifelong partner of the poet George Oppen. Besides her singular autobiography, she published two collections of poetry, Poems & Transpositions and the chapbook Mother and Daughter and the Sea.
Jeffrey Yang works as an editor at New Directions. He is the author of the poetry books An Aquarium, Vanishing-Line, and Hey, Marfa, and the editor of The Sea is a Continual Miracle: Sea Poems and Other Writings by Walt Whitman, Time of Grief: Mourning Poems, and Birds, Beasts, and Seas: Nature Poems from New Dire
ctions.