Lines Written In The Days of Growing Darkness

Every year we have been
witness to it: how the world descends
into a rich mash, in order that

it may resume.
And therefore
who would cry out

to the petals on the ground
to stay, knowing, as we must,
how the vivacity of what was is married

to the vitality of what will be?
I don’t say
it’s easy, but what else will do 

if the love one claims to have for the world
be true?
So let us go on

through the sun be swinging east,
and the ponds be cold and black,
and the sweets of the year be doomed.

--Mary Oliver (1935- ), From A Thousand Mornings, 2013