Emily

“The Mockingbird

All summer
the mockingbird
in his pearl-gray coat
and his white-windowed wings

flies
from the hedge to the top of the pine
and begins to sing, but it’s neither
lilting nor lovely,

for he is the thief of other sounds—
whistles and truck brakes and dry hinges
plus all the songs
of other birds in his neighborhood;

mimicking and elaborating,
he sings with humor and bravado,
so I have to wait a long time
for the softer voice of his own life

to come through. He begins
by giving up all his usual flutter
and settling down on the pine’s forelock
then looking around

as though to make sure he’s alone;
then he slaps each wing against his breast,
where his heart is,
and, copying nothing, begins

easing into it
as though it was not half so easy
as rollicking,
as though his subject now

was his true self,
which of course was as dark and secret
as anyone else’s,
and it was too hard—

perhaps you understand—
to speak or to sing it
to anything or anyone
but the sky.”
― Mary Oliver, A Thousand Mornings: Poems

“I’m sorry, he said. I’m just finding you kind of hostile. You’re interpreting your failure to hurt me as hostility on my part, I said. That’s interesting.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

“I was a very autonomous and independent person with an inner life that nobody else had ever touched or perceived.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

“The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her!”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights