BITTERNESS

Poem for Today - January 30, 2014

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, page 43

in New and Selected Poems,

Volume One, Beacon Press,

Boston, 1992

Questions: 

Did Mary Oliver think this as a silent eulogy for someone she knew - and died?

If this were me - and I read this - what would I do next? 

Does this sound true for someone you know? I've lived with priests who fit the description of the person in this piece - and I didn't know what to do. I felt very  sad. Wooooooo! I often wondered, "What happened to them that they turned out like this?"