{"id":174325,"date":"2022-03-03T17:43:41","date_gmt":"2022-03-03T22:43:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=174325"},"modified":"2022-03-03T21:18:26","modified_gmt":"2022-03-04T02:18:26","slug":"sunflowers-uprightly-burning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=174325","title":{"rendered":"Sunflowers uprightly burning"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

\nfrom Ukrainian Soviet director Oleksander Dovzhenko’s “Earth” (1930), one of the greatest of silent films.<\/i><\/p>\n

\nThe Sunflowers, by Mary Oliver<\/strong>
\nCome with me
\n into the field of sunflowers.
\n Their faces are burnished disks,
\n their dry spines
\ncreak like ship masts,
\n their green leaves,
\n so heavy and many,
\n fill all day with the sticky
\nsugars of the sun.
\n Come with me
\n to visit the sunflowers,
\n they are shy
\nbut want to be friends;
\n they have wonderful stories
\n of when they were young –
\n the important weather,
\nthe wandering crows.
\n Don’t be afraid
\n to ask them questions!
\n Their bright faces,
\nwhich follow the sun,
\n will listen, and all
\n those rows of seeds –
\n each one a new life! –
\nhope for a deeper acquaintance;
\n each of them, though it stands
\n in a crowd of many,
\n like a separate universe,
\nis lonely, the long work
\n of turning their lives
\n into a celebration
\n is not easy. Come
\nand let us talk with those modest faces,
\n the simple garments of leaves,
\n the coarse roots in the earth
\n so uprightly burning.<\/p>\n

\n