At this time of year, for an hour in the early morning, the sun streams into my study onto the computer screen. Why pull the blind, or move the screen – instead I move myself into the window chair, and sit reading in the sunlight. It reminds me of this beautiful poem by a favourite poet, whose love of the world, and whose attentiveness to its nature as gift, reminds me of the liturgical ecology of the ancient Psalmists.
The Sun
Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful
_
than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats towards the horizon
_
and into the cloud or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone—
and how it slides again
_
out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower
_
streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance—
and have you ever felt for anything
_
such wild love—
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure
_
that fills you
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you
_
as you stand there
empty-handed—
or have you too
turned from the world—
_
or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?
Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1, pages 50-51.
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