introducing Jane Hirshfield

Lying

He puts his brush to the canvas
with one quick stroke
unfolds a bird from the sky
Steps back, considers
Takes pity.
Unfolds another.


Arja

She spoke almost no English
was there as a spouse
'You talk, but I don't understand nothing,'
she said

But on the good-bye card
she painted,
the words I most remember from that time--

'Only the clouds are faithful to the mountain.'


Abundant Heart

Because the pelicans circle and dive, the fish
Because the cows are fat, the rains
Because the tree is heavy with pears, the earth
Because the woman grows thin, the heart


Secretive Heart
(What's this? This is an old toolshed.
No, this is a great past love.)
Yehuda Amichai

Heart faulters, stops
before a Chinese cauldron
Still good for boiling water

It is one of a dozen or more,
It is merely iron,
It is merely old,
there is much else to see.

The few raised marks
on its belly
are useful to almost no one

Heart looks at it a long time
What do you see? I ask again,
but it does not answer.


Clappered Heart

As always
the day flares up
in the shape
of a small brown
bird. She is
inconsequential
and lovely;
as you were,
one night's beloved,
now long ago.
Two decades
appear and vanish
while I ponder
why you are suddenly here,
standing between her singing
and the red pine
In the distance,
a truck gears down,
the bells
of morning begin.
But because I can,
I silence them.
I stay
a little longer
behind these
ink-stilled clappers,
to watch you shift
in puzzlement and wonder


Manners/Rwanda

They took the woman
and tied to one arm a child
to the other arm a child
to one leg a child--
you also read this in the paper--
and threw them all in.
No marks of damage, not one
on the five bodies,
which means of course
that they drowned,
which means of course
that she knew.
The river made its way
from higher ground toward lower
and carried them with decorum,
the way a river does
it carries what it is given
and because in the night
a border was crossed,
what was given then was
taken out with a pole.
It may have been united
before before added
to the tally sheet with others
and given next
to the quicklime and earth,
but probably not.
There it will likely stay,
where it was carried,
the last contact with anything living
a hand's continuing rising,
almost a waving,
almost a plea
letting go after rolling it in.
The two beats of its fall
almost gentle,
a door being carefully opened,
quietly closed.
And through you too
are sickened, as even the river
is sickened, undrinkable now
with the human heart,
you also carry
what you were given with decorum.
Perhaps reminded later
by something mentioned
only in passing--
a large family,
a cat's toy of string--
you stop smiling a moment soon.
Across the table
someone notices,
but does not speak.
You watch his quesitn rise
and seem to waver like a hand
about to act,
a hand about to change its mind,
and drop politely away.


About Jane Hirshfield
Jane Hirshfield was born in New York City in 1953. After receiving her B.A. from Princeton University in their first graduating class to include women, she went on to study at the San Francisco Zen Center. Her books of poetry include Given Sugar, Given Salt (HarperCollins, 2001) which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, The Lives of the Heart (1997), The October Palace (1994), Of Gravity & Angels (1988), and Alaya (1982). She is the author of Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry (1997) and has also edited and translated The Ink Dark Moon: Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Court of Japan (1990) with Mariko Aratani and Women in Praise of the Sacred: Forty-Three Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women (1994).Her honors include The Poetry Center Book Award, fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, Columbia University's Translation Center Award, the Commonwealth Club of California Poetry Medal, and the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award. In addition to her work as a freelance writer and translator, Hirshfield has taught at UC Berkeley, University of San Francisco, and been Elliston Visiting Poet at the University of Cincinnati. She is currently on the faculty of the Bennington MFA Writing Seminars.



all the above poems from her collection 'The Lives of the Heart'


How I came across her work- random pick from library
any further read beside 'lives of heart'?-no
thoughts- very feminine and subtle, free verses, can be used as lyrics.

Jady's Comments:
hmm seems randomly picking up stuff from the stale shelves of libraries really has some merits . i have yet to run out of clear ideas of what i wish and have yet to read, but i''ll adopt your spontaneity when that day finally comes when i finally have read all i wish to read and dunno what next, hehehe..
i like ''Manners/Rwanda'', almost a mesmerizing silent film, in fragmentary, slow motion..keep loading~~