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A review by toniclark
Come, Thief by Jane Hirshfield
4.0
Really enjoyed this. Probably my favorite of Hirshfield's collections (at least of what I've read, which is not all). I'm partial to the very short ones that just glitter like gems. Here are three of my favorites.
If Truth Is the Lure, Humans Are Fishes
Under each station of the real,
another glimmers.
And so the love of false-bottomed drawers
and the salt mines outside Kraków,
going down and down without drowning.
A man harms his wife, his child.
He says, “Here is the reason.”
She says, “Here is the reason.”
The child says nothing,
watching him led away.
If truth is the lure, humans are fishes.
All the fine bones of that eaten-up story,
think about them.
Their salt-cod whiteness on whiteness.
The Cloudy Vase
Past time,
I threw the flowers out,
washed out
the cloudy vase.
How easily
the old clearness
leapt,
like a practiced tiger,
back inside it.
Contentment
I had lived on this earth
more than fifty years
before hearing the sound
of sixteen New Hampshire Reds
settling in before sleep.
Dusk gathered
like a handkerchief
into a pouch o
f clean straw.
But only fifteen
adjusted themselves
on the wooden couch.
One, with more white in her feathers
than the feathers of others,
still wandered outside,
away from the chuckling,
some quiet joke
neither she nor I quite heard.
"The foxes will have you," I told her.
She scratched the ground,
found a late insect to feast on,
set her clipped beak to peck at my shoe.
Reached for, she ran.
Ran from the ramp
I herded her toward as well.
I tried raccoons, then cold.
I tried stew.
She found a fresh seed.
Her legs were white and clean
and appeared very strong.
We ran around the coop
that way a long time,
she seeming delighted, I flapping.
Darkness, not I, brought her in.
Copyright © 2009 Jane Hirshfield All rights reserved
Reprinted at: http://www.versedaily.org/2009/contentment.shtml
If Truth Is the Lure, Humans Are Fishes
Under each station of the real,
another glimmers.
And so the love of false-bottomed drawers
and the salt mines outside Kraków,
going down and down without drowning.
A man harms his wife, his child.
He says, “Here is the reason.”
She says, “Here is the reason.”
The child says nothing,
watching him led away.
If truth is the lure, humans are fishes.
All the fine bones of that eaten-up story,
think about them.
Their salt-cod whiteness on whiteness.
The Cloudy Vase
Past time,
I threw the flowers out,
washed out
the cloudy vase.
How easily
the old clearness
leapt,
like a practiced tiger,
back inside it.
Contentment
I had lived on this earth
more than fifty years
before hearing the sound
of sixteen New Hampshire Reds
settling in before sleep.
Dusk gathered
like a handkerchief
into a pouch o
f clean straw.
But only fifteen
adjusted themselves
on the wooden couch.
One, with more white in her feathers
than the feathers of others,
still wandered outside,
away from the chuckling,
some quiet joke
neither she nor I quite heard.
"The foxes will have you," I told her.
She scratched the ground,
found a late insect to feast on,
set her clipped beak to peck at my shoe.
Reached for, she ran.
Ran from the ramp
I herded her toward as well.
I tried raccoons, then cold.
I tried stew.
She found a fresh seed.
Her legs were white and clean
and appeared very strong.
We ran around the coop
that way a long time,
she seeming delighted, I flapping.
Darkness, not I, brought her in.
Copyright © 2009 Jane Hirshfield All rights reserved
Reprinted at: http://www.versedaily.org/2009/contentment.shtml