Literary Blog Hop: What to read in the midst of war

Literary Blog Hop is hosted by The Blue Bookcase. If you features book reviews of literary fiction, classic literature, and general literary discussion, you too can join in!

This week's question is:

If you were going off to war (or some other similarly horrific situation) and could only take one book with you, which literary book would you take and why?

I would carry a poetry book, Thirst by Mary Oliver. There is no doubt about it. Now Mary Oliver is one poet, I really love to read. Thirst contains poems which touch my mind, heart and soul....I laugh, smile, cry reading those. 

When I Am Among the Trees
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, "Stay awhile."
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, "It's simple," they say,
"and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine." 


A Pretty Song

From the complications of loving you
I think there is no end or return.
No answer, no coming out of it.
Which is the only way to love, isn't it?
This isn't a play ground, this is
earth, our heaven, for a while.
Therefore I have given precedence
to all my sudden, sullen, dark moods
that hold you in the center of my world.
And I say to my body: grow thinner still.
And I say to my fingers, type me a pretty song.
And I say to my heart: rave on

The House
Because we lived our several lives
Caught up within the spells of love.....
We did not hear, beneath our lives,
The old walls falling out or true,
Foundations shifting in the dark.....

.....For years we lived at peace, until
The rooms themselves began to blend
With time, and empty one by one,
At which we knew, with muted hearts,
That nothing further could be done,
And so rose up, and went away,
Inheritors of breath and love,
Bound to that final black estate
No child can mend or trade away.

Need I say more?