the window

I am not -

open or closed -

what you expected, o heart.

Or would you 

without me have thought

to throw open

the flooding and roar,

to step through the lion's gold pelt?

Have thought that

the passionate glass is the body?

And this life, the one life you wanted?

Wanted, 

meaning neither lacked,

nor desired.

but something else.

Something closer

to how, when the two owl-lovers

begin their night singing

and all the black length of the woods

is held in those arms,

not one stone, not one leaf goes uncalling.

If I had been what you thought,

o heart,

how could the clear glass

flow as it does with mountains,

with jewel-colored, perishing fish?

Flashing and falling,

the black-bright rain of beings and things -

Some recognizable, yours, but others -

too fleeting or large - that cannot be spoken.

Though the one world touches the other

in every part, o heart,

in silence,

like new lovers taking their fill in the crowded dark.

~ Jane Hirshfield 

from The October Palace

art by picasso