Sonnet

By Robert Hass b. 1941 Robert Hass

A man talking to his ex-wife on the phone.

He has loved her voice and listens with attention

to every modulation of its tone. Knowing

it intimately. Not knowing what he wants

from the sound of it, from the tendered civility.

He studies, out the window, the seed shapes

of the broken pods of ornamental trees.

The kind that grow in everyone’s garden, that no one

but horticulturists can name. Four arched chambers

of pale green, tiny vegetal proscenium arches,

a pair of black tapering seeds bedded in each chamber.

A wish geometry, miniature, Indian or Persian,

lovers or gods in their apartments. Outside, white,

patient animals, and tangled vines, and rain.

Source: Sun Under Wood (HarperCollins Publishers Inc, 1996)

Biography

Robert Hass is one of contemporary poetry’s most celebrated and widely-read voices. In addition to his success as a poet, Hass is also recognized as a leading critic and translator, notably of the Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz and Japanese haiku masters Basho, Buson and Issa. Critics celebrate Hass’s own poetry for its clarity of expression, its conciseness, and its imagery, often drawn from everyday life. “Hass has noted his own . . .

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