karanguni | Yuletide, Running, &c.

Yuletide: I picked up a canon, adjacent to my usual canons, for Yuletide this year and was blown away by the quality of the translation. I'm actually very excited for reveals so that I can enthuse about this to the world.

December /JanuaryTalking Meme: I am very late to this party, but give me a topic for a date and I'll talk about it! Go all the way into January if you want.

I leave you all with Mary Oliver, who I was rereading last night and who has reignited old, dormant, enormous emotions. She is a deft hand at nature, both Mother and human. Here is her reading it.

Wild Geese

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.

– Mary Oliver