Three Poems for July: A Blessing, a Field, a Fire
July with Mary Oliver, Erich Kästner & Audre Lorde
Happy July!
We are in the heart of July now, when the summer hums at full volume, sharp and unafraid. The days are long, the light is fierce and everything seems to ripen at once.
Here are three poems to honour this charged, green month. One poem is a question whispered to a grasshopper. Another is a quiet rebellion hidden in a wheat field. The last arrives like fire, burning off illusion, naming what must be named.
Together, they hold the paradox of July: fullness and fatigue, beauty and blaze. This is the month of heat and harvest, of revelation and undoing. July asks not for restraint, but for courage to bask, to break open, to burn a little, and still, to live vividly.
The Summer Day
by Mary Oliver, 1992
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
The July
by Erich Kästner, from The 13 Months Collection, 1955, (translated & abridged)
The town is still.
The fields move like breath.
Humanity sets off—on foot, by train—
and farmers rent out nature
at postcard rates.Sky for hire. Sand, cows, brass bands.
Limousines speed back and forth
and still can’t find
the lost Paradise.In the fields:
bread grows, and pretzels unborn.
Lizards flick. Clouds gather rain,
and thunder waits in its chamber.People chase sport and sunshine—
but not mystery.
They see the world
as a picture book.But the landscape smiles quietly.
It knows time
outlives even vacation.Just off the path:
a story begins.
A girl asleep in poppies.
Bees hum.
A boy called Good-for-Nothing
slips between shadow and light—
heading south,
like always.
Summer Oracle
by Audre Lorde, written in 1970s or early 1980s
Posthumously published in 1997 in The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde
Without expectation
there is no end
to the shock of morning
or even a small summer.The image is fire
blackening the vague lines
into defiance
across this city.The image is fire
sun warming us in a cold country
barren of symbols for love.Now I have forsaken order
and imagine you into fire
untouchable in a magician's cloak
covered with symbols for destruction
and birth.The image is fire
flaming over you, burning off excess
like the blaze planters start.I smell it in the charred breeze
blowing over your body
close, hard, essential
under its cloak of lies.
Read the latest essay…
Letter 12: Joan Didion on Letting Go
Saying Goodbye to All That the Joan Didion Way
(How to know when your time somewhere is done)
In 1956, Joan Didion left California for New York City with a suitcase, a typewriter and a sense that everything was about to begin. She was 21 and freshly hired by Mademoiselle magazine after winning a writing contest. It was one of those twists that …
Thank you for reading and being a part of Earth Poet.
Much Love
— Earth Poetress
References / Bibliography
Oliver, Mary. The Summer Day. From House of Light. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992.
Kästner, Erich. “The July.” From The 13 Months, 1955. Translated and abridged (translator unspecified). Original: Die 13 Monate. Zurich: Atrium Verlag. English translation appears in various anthologies; public domain status may vary.
Lorde, Audre. “Summer Oracle.” Written in the 1970s or early 1980s. Published posthumously in The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997.
Didion, Joan. Goodbye to All That. In Slouching Towards Bethlehem. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1968.
Image References
Cover Image illustrated from images here, here and here:
Image from the Goethe‑Institut article ("Emil and the Detectives" book cover)
Found on the Goethe‑Institut’s Zeitgeister cultural magazine, this image is captioned as the book cover of Emil and the Detectives by Walter Trier goethe.de+2goethe.de+2facebook.com+2.Photograph of Mary Oliver (in "A Friend and Teacher")
The Christian Community Seminary blog features a portrait of Mary Oliver accompanying the post titled A Friend and Teacher – Mary Oliver en.wikipedia.org+5christiancommunityseminary.ca+5christiancommunityseminary.ca+5.Cover of Audre Lorde’s Your Silence Will Not Protect You
The cover artwork appears on sites promoting the 2017 essay collection Your Silence Will Not Protect You by Audre Lorde
Fig. 1 — Josef Albers, Gemini G.E.L., White line square III, 1966, National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra, purchased 1973 © The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation. ARS/Copyright Agency. Link.
Joan Didion Cover image illustration inspired by the 1970 photograph of Joan Didion by Nancy Ellison. Original image licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikipedia.
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