Words + Images

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world
and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathe in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15722

Sometimes I need

only to stand

wherever I am

to be blessed.

— Mary Oliver, an excerpt from the poem “It Was Early”