Godthings

“Now comes a peaceful day, all day long. Then comes evil, crossing the street, going out of its way with determined steps and a face like a nail—invasive, wanting to molest, to hurt, to stain, to dismay, to dishearten. This is no discourse, I have not even the beginnings of sufficient knowledge to hunt down the reasons why. I suppose they, those lives soaked in evil, are miserable and so they ever despise happiness. I suppose they feel powerless and therefore must exert power wherever they can, which is so often upon those unable to comprehend what is happening, much less defend themselves.

Where does such a force come from? What does it mean? A voice very faint, and inside me, offers a possibility: how shall there be redemption and resurrection unless there has been a great sorrow? And isn’t struggle and rising the real work of our lives? Maybe in ten more years I will have another idea. Meanwhile I know this: evil is one part of our beautiful world. And though my writing pays it small attention, I am not blinkered; I, too, have been forced to stand close to it, and have felt the almost muscular agony of impotence before it, unable to interfere or assuage or do anything effective.

Though I do—oh yes I do—believe the soul is improvable. Oh sweet and defiant hope!”

— Mary Oliver, “Winter Hours,” Winter Hours: Prose, Prose Poems, and Poems (via hours)