"The Sun" by Mary Oliver

Have you ever seen 

anything 

in your life 

more wonderful 

than the way the sun, 

every evening, 

relaxed and easy, 

floats toward the horizon 

and into the clouds or the hills, 

or the rumpled sea, and is gone-- 

and how it slides again 

out of the blackness, 

every morning, 

on the other side of the world, 

like a red flower 

streaming upward on its heavenly oils, 

say, on a morning in early summer, 

at its perfect imperial distance-- 

and have you ever felt for anything 

such wild love-- 

do you think there is anywhere, in any language, 

a word billowing enough 

for the pleasure 

that fills you, 

as the sun 

reaches out, 

as it warms you 

as you stand there, 

empty-handed-- 

or have you too 

turned from this world-- 

or have you too 

gone crazy 

for power, 

for things? 

The poem could not be more clear. When you read verse after verse, you can visualize, and even feel what the author wrote in the poem. We people are very familiar to sunrises, sunsets, and the fact of the sun just being there. So what does this author wrote? She just made us see the beauty we all know the sun has, but that we forget to remember and appreciate because of our "busy and important" tasks that recquire our cold side rather than our sensible side.

At the end of the poem, we can all agree, because we are all not used to appreciating nature's beauty frecquently, that we are forgetting about those simple things, that just because of the fact of believing in them and feeling them, make us happier, make us calmed, relaxed, and make our problems fade away. 

The author just pulls out, with a very concrete poem, our common inner feeling of beauty, of simplicity. The sun is not a metaphore in this case, but it can be replaced with any element, like the moon, the sea, the stars, an image... Something that is there to fill us with joy, that just because of being makes us what we are: humans; and leaves aside our ambitions, our worries and problems. So what can I say? I liked the poem a lot. 

(Images from : photoshd.wordpress.com and solarpowerninja.com)

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