The Perfection of Loss

Jane Hirshfield

Like a native speaker

returned

after long exile,

quiet now in two tongues.

The Present

Jane Hirshfield

I wanted to give you something—

no stone, clay, bracelet,

no edible leaf could pass through.

Even a molecule’s fragrance by then too large.

Giving had been taken, as you soon would be.

Still, I offered the puffs of air shaped to meaning.

They remained air.

I offered memory on memory,

but what is memory that dies with the fallible inks?

I offered apology, sorrow, longing. I offered anger.

How fine is the mesh of death. You can almost see through it.

I stood on one side of the present, you stood on the other.

in days of vertigo and hesitation

- jane hirshfield

O ser humano é indefinido. Ele é o único ser que não tem uma definição na natureza.
- Pico della Mirandola citado por Luiz Felipe Pondé em Linhas Cruzadas (23/09/2026)

a thought is a forest

- jane hirshfield

I told my grief: patience.

- Jane Hirshfield

I pressed myself to the clear glass

between wanting and world.

I wanted to be lush, tropical,

excessive. To be green.

- Jane Hirshfield

Fire Strike

Margaret Noodin

At the threshold

of melancholy

is a voice barely heard

a light wrapped in fog

and a piece of steel

longing for flint.

Strike it.

I have my heart on my fist
Like a blind falcon.

- Anne Hébert

And the mirages, the

            mirages—

            I knew what they were

yet often

changed my course 

            and followed them.

- Robert Hayden

On some days, my depression is over there in a picnic basket while I am

over here looking at art.

- Victoria Chang

Now the name I was given is no longer fitting

We don’t remember our birth.

When a mother dies, it’s gone.

- Victoria Chang