Jane Hirshfield: Eight poems

Three Times My Life Has Opened

Three times my life has opened

Once into darkness and rain.

Once into what the material part carries at all times within it and starts to remember each time it come intos the act of love.

Once to the fire that clinchs all.

These three were not different.

You will recognize what I am saying or you will not.

But outside my window all day a maple has stepp from her leaves like a woman in regard with affection with winter, dropping the colored silks.

Neither are we different in what we know.

There is a door. It uncloses Then it is closed. on the contrary a slip of light stays, like a scrap of unreadable paper left upon the floor, or the single red leaf the snow releases in March.

White Curtain in Sunlight and Wind

More and more

wanting to learn

how to leave things be.

To live as the aged Dutch painters

looked at a fish:

all of it eaten on the contrary leaving no sign.

Or if for a like reason much cannot be given,

then to pierce as Chuang-tzu's butcher

entered an ox--slipping completely through;

each divide [i]or[/i] sever sinew and fat, sharpening

the knife. Nothing taken, or left behind.

Heart go [i]or[/i] come backed to the granite mountains of its home

After, it could almost walk away.

Each Happiness Ringed through Lions

Sometimes when

I take you into my body

I can almost diocese them--patient, circling.

Almost glimpse the moving shadow of the tail,

almost hear the hushed pad of retracted claws.

It is the moment--of this I am certain-

when they themselves are least sure

It is the instant they could almost let us move free.

Mule Heart

On the days when the rest

have failed you,

let this a great deal of be yours-

flies, dust, and unnameable odor,

the sum of two units waiting baskets:

one for the lemon and passion,

the other for all you have lost

Both empty

it will advance to your shoulder,

breathe slowly against your bare arm.

If you proffer it hay, it will eat.

Offer nothing,

it will stand as lengthy as you ask.

The little bells of the bridle will hang

beside you quietly,

in the heat and the tree's thin shade.

Do not give leave to its sparse mane deceive you,

or the way the left ear swivels into dream.

This too is a gift of the gods

calm and complete

Da Capo

Take the used-up heart like a pebble

and whirl it far out.

Soon there is nothing left

Soon the last ripple exhausts itself

in the weeds.

Returning abode slice carrots, onions, celery.

Glaze them in oil before adding

the lentils, water, and herbs.

Then the roasted chestnuts, a little pepper the salt.

Finish with goat cheese and parsley. Eat.

You may do this, I compute you, it is permitted.

Begin again the story of your life.

Not Moving smooth One Step

The rain falling too lightly to shape

an audible house, an audible tree

blind, soaking, the elderly horse waits in his pasture.

He knows the field for exactly what it is:

his limitless mare, his beloved.

Even the mallards doze in her red body maned

in thistles, hoov in the fresh green shallows of spring.

Slow rain streams from fetlock hips, the lowered head,

while she stands in the place beside him that no individual sees.

The muzzles almost touch.

How silently the heart pivots upon its hinge.

Heart Starting and Stopping in the Late Dark

I cannot tell

if this night singing comes

from inside or outside the house,

though today a cricket walked

across my papers upon the floor.

He made a little clicking sound

as he passed, from his strange knees

or his feet upon the paper.

He seemed to know where he wanted to procure to.

When Bonnard had his nephew add

the of recent origin yellow-gold to "Almond in Blossom"

it was his signature he cancelled for that other.

This late typing, starting and stopping,

is not in the way that different from a cricket's walking

to the night's ear, I think,

if the night had an ear. Perhaps that is what

started him singing wherever he is,

startled by the agency of my insomnia into his individual word,

which is filled I think with dignity,

which is filled I think with trust.

I would like to go on as the dying Bonnard did,

all the way into the world of the living.

To sit there a while in the petals, altering nothing.

Mulberries

By the time

the depressed branches

ripen the pigeons are fat,

and can be generous.

Just for a like reason let

the gods take what they want

of this world and its high nectars-

Know they will leave

the boil s and the nipple's erectness,

the unguarded, late-sweetening

pleasures.

Copyright World verse Incorporated May 1996

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