1
Rain fell as a glass
breaks,
something suddenly everywhere at the same
2
To live like a painting
looked into from more than one angle at once —
eye to eye with the doorway,
down at the hair,
up at your own dusty feet.
3
“This is your house,”
said my bird heart to my heart of the cricket,
and I entered.
4
The happy see only happiness,
the living see only life,
the young see only the young,
as lovers believe
they wake always beside one also in love.
5
However often I turned its pages,
I kept ending up
as the same two sentences of the book:
The being of some is: to be. Of others: to be without.
Then I fell back asleep, in Swedish.
6
A sheep grazing is unimpressed by the mountain
but not by its flies.
7
The grief
of what hasn’t yet happened —
a door closed from inside.
The weight of the grass
dividing
an ant’s five-legged silence
walking through it.
8
What is the towel, what is the water,
changes,
though of we three,
only the towel can be held upside down in the sun.
9
“I was once.”
Said not in self-pity or praise.
This dignity we allow barn owl,
ego, oyster.
~ Jane Hirshfield
from Poetry (January 2014)
