National Poetry Month, Day 14: Jane Hirshfield
This is from a book I read in college for a wonderful class called “Buddhism in Contemporary Poetry” with Linda Bamber.
This was at Tufts University in 1995. This poem takes me back in all the best ways. Enjoy!
For What Binds UsThere are names for what binds us:strong forces, weak forces.Look around, you can see them:the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,nails rusting into the places they join,joints dovetailed on their own weight.The way things stay so solidlywherever they’ve been set down?and gravity, scientists say, is weak..And see how the flesh grows backacross a wound, with a great vehemence,more strongthan the simple, untested surface before.There’s a name for it on horses,when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,.as all flesh,is proud of its wounds, wears themas honors given out after battle,small triumphs pinned to the chest?.And when two people have loved each othersee how it is like ascar between their bodies,stronger, darker, and proud;how the black cord makes of them a single fabricthat nothing can tear or mend.? Jane Hirshfield, from Of Gravity & Angels, Wesleyan, 1988