Non cercare una risposta
«Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?»«Dimmi, che intendi fare
con la tua unica, selvaggia e preziosa vita?»
Mary Oliver, The Summer Day
Mary Oliver (10 settembre 1935-17 gennaio 2019) fu una delle più citate e popolari poetesse statunitensi del Novecento, molto apprezzata anche grazie al suo stile immediato e accessibile e per l’esaltazione della bellezza del mondo naturale. Nel 1984 vinse il Premio Pulitzer e nel 1992 il National Book Award, uno dei più importanti premi letterari statunitensi. Nel 2007 il New York Times la definì «di gran lunga la poetessa che vende di più in questo paese».
Thank you, Mary Oliver, for giving so many of us words to live by.
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?"— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) January 17, 2019
The Summer Day è la sua poesia più famosa, che potete trovare nella raccolta New and Selected Poems, uscita nel 1992.
«The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?»
