This is What Was Bequeathed to Us, by Gregory Orr

In written word, and simple video, here is a poem that draws together the ecological and the spiritual, reminding us, as we seem to have forgotten, that all the universe and everything in it, is sacred. This is What was Bequeathed Us, from Gregory Orr’s How Beautiful the Beloved.

“This is what was bequeathed us” by Gregory Orr is part of our “Visualizing Poetry” series, which features animated interpretations of beloved poems from our archive.

This is what was bequeathed us:
This earth the beloved left
And, leaving,
Left to us.

No other world
But this one:
Willows and the river
And the factory
With its black smokestacks.

No other shore, only this bank
On which the living gather.

No meaning but what we find here.
No purpose but what we make.

That, and the beloved’s clear instructions:
Turn me into song; sing me awake.