Day 381: Butterfly

 

I finally got to snap a picture of a butterfly yesterday (above) and have been since looking for a poem to go with it. There are many! 

But this one by WS Mervin I love best, likening a butterfly to joy -  how unaware it can take us and how especially, we must be content to accept its fleeting character, for to try to capture it, would be to cause unnecessary pain. Yes, just like Blake expressed in his poem 'Eternity': 'He who binds himself to a joy/does the winged life destroy' but he who 'kisses the joy as it flies/lives in eternity's sunrise.' 

(*Note the vagueness caused by the lack of punctuation - Mervin is famous for this.)

He who binds to himself a joy Does the winged life destroy He who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity's sunrise - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20496#sthash.FhPMHB8V.dpuf

He who binds to himself a joy Does the winged life destroy He who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity's sunrise - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20496#sthash.FhPMHB8V.dpuf

One of the Butterflies - WS Mervin

The trouble with pleasure is the timing
it can overtake me without warning
and be gone before I know it is here
it can stand facing me unrecognized
while I am remembering somewhere else
in another age or someone not seen
for years and never to be seen again
in this world and it seems that I cherish
only now a joy I was not aware of
when it was here although it remains
out of reach and will not be caught or named
or called back and if I could make it stay
as I want to it would turn to pain