POEM
Instant Glimpsable Only for an Instant
Moment. Moment. Moment.
—equal inside you, moment,
the velocitous mountains and cities rising and falling,
songs of children, iridescence even of beetles.
It is not you the locust can strip of all leaf.
Untouchable green at the center,
the wolf too lopes past you and through you as he eats.
Insult to mourn you, you who mourn no one, unable.
Without transformation,
yours the role of the chorus, to whom nothing happens.
The living step forward: choosing to enter, to lose.
I, who am made of you only,
speak these words against your unmasterable instruction—
A knife cannot cut itself open,
yet you ask me both to be you and to know you.
Jane Hirshfield, “Instant Glimpsable Only for an Instant” from After. Copyright © 2006 by Jane Hirshfield. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Buy this book.
Source: After (2006)
Award-winning poet and translator Jane Hirshfield is the author of several collections of verse, . . . MORE »
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