Reflections of a Man's Heart

Easy to see
that the lion and angel
are one visitation,
but how do you come
to offer your throat to either?
In autumn, the trees
learn to drop off
both their disguises,
what finally fills them is simple.
The heart's deepest
affections will equally be devoured.
And still we go ankle deep
into that carnage, lifting first one,
then another part up to the light.
As if we were looking for something simple.
As if what we wanted
were not the thing that falls.

- Jane Hirshfield, The lives of the heart

Behold this little Bane-
The Boon of all alive-
As common as it is unknown
The name of it is Love-To lack of it is Woe-
To own of it is Wound-
Not elsewhere-if in Paradise
Its Tantamount be found-

Emily Dickinson, The works of love

It's been a week filled with that oh so especial "can this be real?" quality.

So nice to get up and see SW by my side...

Yes, I *really* love the time with her.

Wow.

^^

Don't go far off, not even for a day, because --
because -- I don't know how to say it: a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station
when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.

Don't leave me, even for an hour, because
then the little drops of anguish will all run together,
the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
into me, choking my lost heart.

Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach;
may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance.
Don't leave me for a second, my dearest,

because in that moment you'll have gone so far
I'll wander mazily over all the earth, asking,
Will you come back? Will you leave me here, dying?

Me from Myself - to banish -
Had I Art -
Impregnable my Fortress
Unto All Heart -

But since Myself - assault Me -
How have I peace
Except by subjugating
Consciousness?

And since We're mutual Monarch
How this be
Except by Abdication -
Me - of Me?

-Emily Dickinson

There are names for what binds us:
strong forces, weak forces.
Look around, you can see them:
the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,
nails rusting into the places they join,
joints dovetailed on their own weight.
The way things stay so solidly
wherever they've been set down -
and gravity, scientists say, is weak.

And see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with a great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
There's a name for it on horses,
when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,

as all flesh
is proud of its wounds, wears them
as honors given out of battle,
small triumphs pinned to the chest -

And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.

- Jane Hirshfield

Here and now
the same sun
sky, stars
over us

Some cross the Pass of Love,
some don't.
Unless you are the watchman there
it is not your right
to cast blame.

- Izumi Shikibu

The drop that wrestles in the Sea -
Forgets her own locality -
As I - toward Thee -
She knows herself an incense small -
Yet small - she sighs - if All - is All - How larger - be?
The Ocean - smiles - at her Conceit -
But she, forgetting Amphitrite -
Pleads - "Me"?

- Emily Dickinson, The works of love

This body
grown fragile, floating,
a reed cut from its roots. . .
If a stream would ask me
to follow, I'd go, I think

- Ono No Komachi

Of Gravity & Angels
And, suddenly, again,
I want the long road of your thigh
under my hand, your well-travelled thigh,
your salt-slicked & come-slicked thigh,
and I want the taste of you, slaking,
under my tongue (that place of riding desire,
my tongue) and I want
all the unnameable, soft, and yielding places,
belly & neck & the place wings would rise from
if we were angels,
and we are, and I want the rising regions of you
shoulder & cock & tongue & breathing &
suddenness of you
opening
all fontanel, all desire, the whole thing beginning
for the first time again, the first,
until I wonder then how is it
we even know which part we are,
even know the ground that lifts us, raucous,
out of ourselves,
as the rising sound of a summer dawn
when all of it joins in.

- Jane Hirshfield

In this world
love has no color -
yet how deeply
my body
is stained by yours.

- Izumi Shikibu

If you love him
love him
to destruction;
a yellow day lily
bending on the wind.

- Motoko Michiura

Sleep
Here, we are one geography:
every part of us inked on a map
where, across all the blue waters,
continents' edges inexplicably match.

I move closer to you in the dark,
feel the slow heat
that embers you deeper into the night.
Where all fires descend a few hours
into their own slow-dreaming hearts.
Where the ravine hides in its own steepness
no matter how long, how fiercely we love.

- Jane Hirshfield

Now, I must go to work,
my little,
while you continue sleeping,
unaware of these words I write
while thinking of you
- as I do now

Listening . . .
Oh, it is so difficult
to suspend judgement

Believe me,
If somebody teaches me
I promise to learn!

You are almost here, just one day is left!

Today, my head, my heart, my body, all have agreed to miss you even more.

^^

I want to gather your darkness
in my hands, to cup it like water
and drink.
I want this in the same way
as I want to touch your cheek -
it is the same -
the way a moth will come
to the bedroom window in late September,
beating and beating its wings against cold glass;
the way a horse will lower
his long head to water, and drink,
and pause to lift his head and look,
and drink again,
taking everything in with the water,
everything.

-Jane Hirshfield

Just received Given Sugar, Given Salt, other book from Jane Hirshfield.

Still reading her Of Gravity & Angels, but got a glimpse of the poems. Looks good...

Here are two poems I liked:

"Nothing Lasts"

"Nothing lasts" -
how bitterly the thought attends each loss.

"Nothing lasts" -
a promise also of consolation.

Grief and hope
the skipping rope's two ends,
twin daughters of impatience.

One wears a dress of wool, the other cotton.

"Mathematics" (fragment)

...
Does a poem enlarge the world,
or only our idea of the world?

How do you take one from the other,
I lied, or did not lie,
in answer.

Boy, I am enjoying her Of Gravity & Angels a lot. What a delicious title, by the way ^^

...

Now, I better run if I want to meet F and S and arrive to the cinema on time...