The Beauty Read online

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK

  PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  Copyright © 2015 by Jane Hirshfield

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House LLC, New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, Penguin Random House companies.

  www.aaknopf.com/poetry

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hirshfield, Jane, 1953–

  [Poems. Selections]

  The beauty : poems / Jane Hirshfield.

  pages cm

  “This is a Borzoi Book”—Title page verso.

  Summary: “A collection of original poems by Jane Hirshfield exploring the profundities and quirks of existence”—Provided by publisher.

  ISBN 978-0-385-35107-2 (hardback) — ISBN 978-0-385-35108-9 (ebook)

  I. Title.

  PS3558.I694A6 2015

  811′.54—dc23

  2014025831

  Front-of-jacket image: Still Life with Peaches by Adrian Coorte. Private Collection /

  Johnny Van Haeften Ltd., London / Bridgeman Images

  Author photograph by Michael Lionstar

  Jacket design by Stephanie Ross

  v3.1

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  FADO

  MY SKELETON

  MY PROTEINS

  MOSQUITO

  MY EYES

  MY SPECIES

  MY CORKBOARD

  MY MEMORY

  MY WEATHER

  IN MY WALLET I CARRY A CARD

  MY TASK

  MY SANDWICH

  A WELL RUNS OUT OF THIRST

  IN A ROOM WITH MANY WINDOWS

  A PHOTOGRAPH OF A FACE HALF LIT, HALF IN DARKNESS

  A COTTONY FATE

  CELLOPHANE: AN ASSAY

  QUARTZ CLOCK

  MY LIFE WAS THE SIZE OF MY LIFE

  PERSPECTIVE: AN ASSAY

  ORDINARY RAIN. EVERY LEAF IS WET.

  THINGS KEEP SORTING THEMSELVES

  I WAKE EARLY

  IN A KITCHEN WHERE MUSHROOMS WERE WASHED

  HONEY

  HAMPER

  FLORISTS’ ROSES

  MOP WITHOUT STICK

  THE PROBLEM

  IN PRAISE OF BEING PERIPHERAL

  A CHAIR IN SNOW

  LIKE THE SMALL HOLE BY THE PATH-SIDE SOMETHING LIVES IN

  WET SPRING

  MANY-ROOFED BUILDING IN MOONLIGHT

  ANYWHERE YOU LOOK

  ANATOMY AND MAKING

  I CAST MY HOOK, I DECIDE TO MAKE PEACE

  A PERSON PROTESTS TO FATE

  TWELVE PEBBLES:

  A Hand Holds One Power

  The Woman, The Tiger

  Tri-Focal

  I Know You Think I’ve Forgotten

  Still Life

  A man I once asked a question of has died; his son sends a letter.

  Human Measures

  Immigration & Hunger

  Humbling: An Assay

  For Fifteen Years

  A map open on one table, a guidebook on the other

  Making & Passing

  I WANTED ONLY A LITTLE

  A COMMON COLD

  THIS MORNING, I WANTED FOUR LEGS

  ONCE, I

  IN DAYLIGHT, I TURNED ON THE LIGHTS

  HOW RARELY I HAVE STOPPED TO THANK THE STEADY EFFORT

  AS A HAMMER SPEAKS TO A NAIL

  I SAT IN THE SUN

  OF AMPLITUDE THERE IS NO SCRAPING BOTTOM

  THE ONE NOT CHOSEN

  SNOW IN APRIL

  FEBRUARY 29

  THREE MORNINGS

  AWAY FROM HOME, I THOUGHT OF THE EXILED POETS

  ALL SOULS

  IN SPACE

  SOUVENIR

  THE MUST-MICE

  THE CONVERSATIONS I REMEMBER MOST

  TWO LINEN HANDKERCHIEFS

  WORKS & LOVES

  PERSPECTIVE WITHOUT ANY POINT IN WHICH IT MIGHT VANISH

  RUNNER

  THE BEAUTIFUL AUSTERE ROOM

  NOT ONE MOMENT OF THIS A SUBTRACTION

  I PROFESS THE UNCERTAIN

  ZERO PLUS ANYTHING IS A WORLD

  ENTANGLEMENT

  LIKE TWO NEGATIVE NUMBERS MULTIPLIED BY RAIN

  Acknowledgments

  A Note About the Author

  Other Books by This Author

  FADO

  A man reaches close

  and lifts a quarter

  from inside a girl’s ear,

  from her hands takes a dove

  she didn’t know was there.

  Which amazes more,

  you may wonder:

  the quarter’s serrated murmur

  against the thumb

  or the dove’s knuckled silence?

  That he found them,

  or that she never had,

  or that in Portugal,

  this same half-stopped moment,

  it’s almost dawn,

  and a woman in a wheelchair

  is singing a fado

  that puts every life in the room

  on one pan of a scale,

  itself on the other,

  and the copper bowls balance.

  MY SKELETON

  My skeleton,

  who once ached

  with your own growing larger,

  are now,

  each year

  imperceptibly smaller,

  lighter,

  absorbed by your own

  concentration.

  When I danced,

  you danced.

  When you broke,

  I.

  And so it was lying down,

  walking,

  climbing the tiring stairs.

  Your jaws. My bread.

  Someday you,

  what is left of you,

  will be flensed of this marriage.

  Angular wristbone’s arthritis,

  cracked harp of rib cage,

  blunt of heel,

  opened bowl of the skull,

  twin platters of pelvis—

  each of you will leave me behind,

  at last serene.

  What did I know of your days,

  your nights,

  I who held you all my life

  inside my hands

  and thought they were empty?

  You who held me all your life

  in your hands

  as a new mother holds

  her own unblanketed child,

  not thinking at all.

  MY PROTEINS

  They have discovered, they say,

  the protein of itch—

  natriuretic polypeptide b—

  and that it travels its own distinct pathway

  inside my spine.

  As do pain, pleasure, and heat.

  A body it seems is a highway,

  a cloverleaf crossing

  well built, well traversed.

  Some of me going north, some going south.

  Ninety percent of my cells, they have discovered,

  are not my own person,

  they are other beings inside me.

  As ninety-six percent of my life is not my life.

  Yet I, they say, am they—

  my bacteria and yeasts,

  my father and mother,

  grandparents, lovers,

  my drivers talking on cell phones,

  my subways and bridges,

  my thieves, my police

  who chase my self night and day.

  My proteins, apparently also me,

  fold the shirts.

  I find in this crowded metropolis


  a quiet corner,

  where I build of not-me Lego blocks

  a bench,

  pigeons, a sandwich

  of rye bread, mustard, and cheese.

  It is me and is not,

  the hunger

  that makes the sandwich good.

  It is not me then is,

  the sandwich—

  a mystery neither of us

  can fold, unfold, or consume.

  MOSQUITO

  I say I

  &

  a small mosquito drinks from my tongue

  but many say we and hear I

  say you or he and

  hear I

  what can we do with this problem

  a bowl held in both hands

  cannot be filled by its holder

  x, says the blue whale

  x, say the krill

  solve for y, says the ocean, then multiply by existence

  the feet of an ant make their own sound on the earth

  ice is astonished by water

  a person misreads

  delirium as delphinium

  and falls into

  a blueness sleepy as beauty when sneezing

  the pronoun dozes

  MY EYES

  An hour is not a house,

  a life is not a house,

  you do not go through them as if

  they were doors to another.

  Yet an hour can have shape and proportion,

  four walls, a ceiling.

  An hour can be dropped like a glass.

  Some want quiet as others want bread.

  Some want sleep.

  My eyes went

  to the window, as a cat or dog left alone does.

  MY SPECIES

  even

  a small purple artichoke

  boiled

  in its own bittered

  and darkening

  waters

  grows tender,

  grows tender and sweet

  patience, I think,

  my species

  keep testing the spiny leaves

  the spiny heart

  MY CORKBOARD

  However many holes are in you,

  always there’s room for another.

  However much you carry,

  you can hold more.

  Like a saint making a joke,

  imperfection of surface

  suits you.

  Your seams

  remind of quiet tectonic plates.

  Chthonic corkboard,

  always beneath

  even when hung on your vertical side,

  your waiting thumbtacks

  seem to me

  a glittering affection,

  the mi casa, su casa

  of a door standing open in every weather

  of invitation.

  I apologize to you, corkboard—

  I, who would like

  to be more like you in spirit,

  cover you over

  with maps, plans, bills.

  Even these words that praise you

  further disguise you.

  MY MEMORY

  Like the small soaps and shampoos

  a traveler brings home

  then won’t use,

  you, memory,

  almost weightless

  this morning inside me.

  MY WEATHER

  Wakeful, sleepy, hungry, anxious,

  restless, stunned, relieved.

  Does a tree also?

  A mountain?

  A cup holds

  sugar, flour, three large rabbit-breaths of air.

  I hold these.

  IN MY WALLET I CARRY A CARD

  In my wallet I carry a card

  which declares I have the power to marry.

  In my wallet I carry a card

  which declares I may drive.

  In my wallet I carry a card

  that says to a merchant I may be trusted to pay her.

  In my wallet I carry a card

  that states I can borrow a book in the town where I live.

  In my hand I carry a card.

  Its lines declare I am cardless, carless,

  stateless, and have no money.

  It is buoyant and edgeless.

  It names me one of the Order of All Who Will Die.

  MY TASK

  An idea appears.

  It catches

  against the edge of the bedside table.

  Coffee on the wall.

  Coffee on the marble tabletop.

  Coffee on the sheets.

  The idea has flown everywhere with it.

  Aplysia, marine snail of memory,

  someone may someday find in your 20,000 neurons

  this thought I have lost.

  My task to find your less studied sister,

  the erasing

  and soapy sea sponge.

  MY SANDWICH

  So many things

  you’d not have thought of

  until they were given.

  Even the simple—

  a cottage cheese sandwich,

  a heron’s contractible neck.

  You eat. You look.

  Then you look back and it’s over.

  This life. This flood—

  unbargained for as lasting love was—

  of lasting oddness.

  A WELL RUNS OUT OF THIRST

  A well runs out of thirst

  the way time runs out of a week,

  the way a country runs out of its alphabet

  or a tree runs out of its height.

  The way a brown pelican

  runs out of anchovy-glitter at darkfall.

  A strange collusion,

  the way a year runs out of its days

  but turns into another,

  the way a cotton towel’s compact

  with pot and plate seems to run out of dryness

  but in a few minutes finds more.

  A person comes into the kitchen

  to dry the hands, the face,

  to stand on the lip of a question.

  Around the face, the hands,

  behind the shoulders,

  yeasts, mountains, mosses multiply answers.

  There are questions that never run out of questions,

  answers that don’t exhaust answer.

  Take this question the person stands asking:

  a gate rusting open.

  Yes stands on its left, no on its right,

  two big planets of unpainted silence.

  IN A ROOM WITH MANY WINDOWS

  In a room with many windows

  some thoughts slide past uncatchable, ghostly.

  Three silent bicyclists. Slowly, a woman on crutches.

  It is like the night you slept out on the sandy edge of a creek bank,

  feeling the step of some light, clawed thing on your palm,

  crossing to drink. You were nothing to it.

  Hummock. Earth clump. Root knob wild in the dark.

  Like that thirsty creature, to you.

  You could guess it, but you can’t name it.

  A PHOTOGRAPH OF A FACE HALF LIT, HALF IN DARKNESS

  Even 3 + 2 is like this.

  A photograph of a face half lit, half in darkness.

  A train station where one train is stopped

  and another passes behind it,

  heard, but not seen.

  A person proud of five good senses

  lives without echolocation.

  Dogs pity our noses

  as we pity the bee that blunders the glass.

  Take out every other word of the world,

  what is left?

  A half half darkness.

  A station one is and passes.

  We live our lives in one place

  and look in every moment into another.

  As on a child’s map,

  where X

  marks both riddle and treasure.

  It is near, but not here.

  A COTT
ONY FATE

  Long ago, someone

  told me: avoid or.

  It troubles the mind

  as a held-out piece of meat disturbs a dog.

  Now I too am sixty.

  There was no other life.

  CELLOPHANE: AN ASSAY

  There are kinds of transparence.

  Yours was invented

  sometime between

  tempered glass and Saran Wrap.

  I have at times wanted to be you:

  something looked through and past.

  You were born noble: a tree.

  Caustics and acids changed you

  to what you now are,

  protective, stiff, almost weightless.

  Both captive and guard,

  your desire is to be frivolous, self-destructive,

  undone and opened.

  Your bright red necklace announces:

  “Tear here.”

  Inside you, tobacco.

  Inside you, peppermints, gingersnaps, gum.

  You would not be found

  wrapping a mattress or gun.

  You were dictated into the world

  by the muse of “it could be.”

  You were unlikely but useful,

  so kept.

  Your art is audible, immodest:

  to preserve against time.

  In this, you are like a small metal flute