"The Coming of Light" 
Mark Strand

Even this late it happens:
the coming of love, the coming of light. 
You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves, 
stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows, 
sending up warm bouquets of air.
Even this late the bones of the body shine 
and tomorrow's dust flares into breath.

"My Name"
Mark Strand

One night when the lawn was a golden green
and the marbled moonlit trees rose like fresh memorials
in the scented air, and the whole countryside pulsed
with the chirr and murmur of insects, I lay in the grass
feeling the great distances open above me, and wondered
what I would become-and where I would find myself-
and though I barely existed, I felt for an instant
that the vast star-clustered sky was mine, and I heard
my name as if for the first time, heard it the way
one hears the wind or the rain, but faint and far off
as though it belonged not to me but to the silence
from which it had come and to which it would go. 

Keeping Things Whole by Mark Strand

In a field

I am the absence

of field.

This is

always the case.

Wherever I am

I am what is missing.

When I walk

I part the air

and always

the air moves in   

to fill the spaces

where my body’s been.

We all have reasons

for moving.

I move

to keep things whole.

Black Sea by Mark Strand

One clear night while the others slept, I climbed
the stairs to the roof of the house and under a sky
strewn with stars I gazed at the sea, at the spread of it,
the rolling crests of it raked by the wind, becoming
like bits of lace tossed in the air. I stood in the long,
whispering night, waiting for something, a sign, the approach
of a distant light, and I imagined you coming closer,
the dark waves of your hair mingling with the sea,
and the dark became desire, and desire the arriving light.
The nearness, the momentary warmth of you as I stood
on that lonely height watching the slow swells of the sea
break on the shore and turn briefly into glass and disappear . . .
Why did I believe you would come out of nowhere? Why with all
that the world offers would you come only because I was here? 

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
In the family of things. 

"I Am Learning To Abandon The World"
Linda Pastan

I am learning to abandon the world
before it can abandon me.
Already I have given up the moon
and snow, closing my shades
against the claims of white.
And the world has taken
my father, my friends.
I have given up melodic lines of hills,
moving to a flat, tuneless landscape.
And every night I give my body up
limb by limb, working upwards
across bone, towards the heart.
But morning comes with small
reprieves of coffee and birdsong.
A tree outside the window
which was simply shadow moments ago
takes back its branches twig
by leafy twig.
And as I take my body back
the sun lays its warm muzzle on my lap
as if to make amends. 

We Are Many by Pablo Neruda

Of the many men whom I am, whom we are,

I cannot settle on a single one.

They are lost to me under the cover of clothing

They have departed for another city.

When everything seems to be set

to show me off as a man of intelligence,

the fool I keep concealed on my person

takes over my talk and occupies my mouth.

On other occasions, I am dozing in the midst

of people of some distinction,

and when I summon my courageous self,

a coward completely unknown to me

swaddles my poor skeleton

in a thousand tiny reservations.

When a stately home bursts into flames,

instead of the fireman I summon,

an arsonist bursts on the scene,

and he is I. There is nothing I can do.

What must I do to distinguish myself?

How can I put myself together?

All the books I read

lionize dazzling hero figures,

brimming with self-assurance.

I die with envy of them;

and, in films where bullets fly on the wind,

I am left in envy of the cowboys,

left admiring even the horses.

But when I call upon my DASHING BEING,

out comes the same OLD LAZY SELF,

and so I never know just WHO I AM,

nor how many I am, nor WHO WE WILL BE BEING.

I would like to be able to touch a bell

and call up my real self, the truly me,

because if I really need my proper self,

I must not allow myself to disappear.

While I am writing, I am far away;

and when I come back, I have already left.

I should like to see if the same thing happens

to other people as it does to me,

to see if as many people are as I am,

and if they seem the same way to themselves.

When this problem has been thoroughly explored,

I am going to school myself so well in things

that, when I try to explain my problems,

I shall speak, not of self, but of geography.