Sunday, October 27, 2019

the weighing





The heart's reasons
seen clearly,
even the hardest
will carry
its whip-marks and sadness
and must be forgiven.

As the drought-starved 
eland forgives
the drought-starved lion
who finally takes her,
enters willingly then
the life she cannot refuse,
and is lion, is fed,
and does not remember the other.

So few grains of happiness
measured against all he dark
and still the scales balance.

The world asks of us
only the strength we have and we give it.
Then it asks more, and we give it.




~ Jane Hirshfield
from The October Palace
photo by eliot porter





1 comments:

erin said...

As the drought-starved
eland forgives
the drought-starved lion
who finally takes her,
enters willingly then
the life she cannot refuse,
and is lion, is fed,
and does not remember the other.


i should like this as a tattoo.

and i should like to hold it up as a looking glass through which to look at everyone in the world.

i was thinking today on a violence done to me and on a violence i did to someone else, for it is so often perceived that we do the violence, that what can we really be guilty of? being ourselves? trying to survive? and so this comes in a timely manner. i can not blame him. i do not want to blame him. and if he wants to blame me, there is nothing i can do to stop the violence. but i wish he would understand, it does not affect me. it breaks all around this forcefield of accpetance and becomes nothing. unfortunately he is the only one to carry the violence.

xo
erin