Reflections of a Man's Heart

I.

The sky's blue deepens to meet

the darkness of trees.

In the window

an old woman's face

looks at me, yellow in the yellow light.

I can see the grain, the winnowing, the chaff

cupped in her hands -

an indiscriminate harvest,

years of shadows settling in like birds.

2.

What is it to look at your hands

and see the veins, at last, completely emerge?

To feel your body's surface erode?

In the quiet nights, all the stark lace-work

starts to come undone,

the fine nerve-net releases its music

gently into the dark.

3.

I asked my grandmother about this

but she told me lies,

stories she'd heard from her own grandmother,

re-worked.

I asked my grandmother again

and she called me by her dead sister's name -

May, she murmured, May.

- Jane Hirshfield, Of Gravity & Angels.