Quand je pense à pourquoi je fais de la photographie de famille, je me retrouve parfois à vraiment ressentir quelque chose que je ne sais pas nommer. C’est un mélange de joie, d’immense tristesse ainsi qu’une envie presque féroce de vivre, de laisser une trace comme un héritage. La vie n’est pas faite que de sourires. Etre humain, c’est apprendre à accepter ce mélange, à laisser place aux larmes autant qu’aux moments de joie.
La semaine dernière, Mary Oliver s’en est allée. Ce bout de femme écrivait des poèmes qui sauvent la vie. Des poèmes où je retrouve justement ce mélange de tristesse, cette féroce envie de vivre une vie pleine de curiosité et de moments d’émerveillement, et puis, d’en célébrer la beauté. La vie, quoi. Des poèmes qui m’ont aidé à accepter.
Alors aujourd’hui, ce sont deux de ses poèmes In Blackwater Woods & The Journey que j’ai choisis pour cette famille & ces images de vies qui me tiennent énormément à cœur.
Avec toute mon amitié.
In Blackwater Woods, Mary Oliver
Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars
of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfilment,
the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders
of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is
nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned
in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side
is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
The Journey, Mary Oliver.
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
‘Mend my life!’
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognised as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.
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