Seen from that height.
Should a carver of netsuke despair
After seeing Michelangelo’s David?
Should painting Easter eggs be abandoned as worthless craft
Because its materials are ephemeral,
Because its creations
Will never be displayed on velvet
Next to Faberge eggs?
An elephant shrew is needed by the savannah
As she is,
Just as worthy of life as an elephant.
There is no need to judge
What makes them different,
What makes them akin.
«At the first tingling of a poem…»
These are tricky poems to find; they are the subtle hum in your notebook….
Natalie Goldberg
* * *
At the first tingling of a poem,
Pounce upon the sensation.
Scratch it hard,
Like a kid
Absorbed in the first mosquito bite of the season.
Scratch, tear, let it become a frenzy, a fury.
Draw blood.
Do not worry about whether anyone
Will ever read your words.
At this moment,
The universe tastes your salt.
This message
Must cross a great distance,
Take an uncharted path
To reach you.
You and I live
Under different constellations,
My now will be
Your long time ago.
I must be brief.
A handful of lines
Has to encompass
Vast plains
Of smooth moonlit snow,
A river asleep under the ice;
Let you glimpse
The dark window,
The small flame of longing
That dances
With a tendril of its own smoke
For a partner.
And suddenly it is here,
That moment when our hands
Touch for a heartbeat.
The heat of your fingers
Lights a beacon
That will not go out.
My words in your palm
Melt into clear water.
A muscular, thick-pelted woodchuck, created in yield, in abandon, lifts onto his haunches.
…
In Russian, the translator told me, there is no word for “thirsty”…
Jane Hirshfield
I watch the thick-pelted woodchuck
Waddle across the poem.
Alert, yet oblivious to the attention
Of both the poet and the reader,
He pauses, lifts onto his haunches
Then plunges into a thicket of ferns,
Vanishing into a space that opens
Beyond the boundaries of words.
The stream that flows across the line-breaks
Has its wellspring in that same landscape.
Mirrored in the rippling water
I glimpse a face that seems oddly familiar.
Perhaps it is my own reflection.
But it breaks up and disappears
Too quickly for me to know for sure.
How unreachable and alluring
Is that world of mysterious beings.
The woodchuck’s fur is stippled with starlight,
The unnamed translator’s face is serene.
Surely, she knows what I can utter
Only as a hesitant question:
“Is the difference between our worlds
In the direction of the gaze?”
