Poem: Falcon
From our poet of the month: Jane Hirshfield
Getty/Fotoillustrator
“How close to human / must the breathed-in air come / before it develops a sense of shame or humor?”
Falcon
Incapable of betrayal: a tree.
Incapable of holding a secret: a stone.
Without contempt for self or other:
an ant, a bee.
Today I and the unhooded bird
that sits on my head
are looking in different directions,
I into the blurring past, he into the blurring future.
How many other pasts and futures,
between and around us, we miss.
Incapable of ungenerosity: grass;
cut, it simply keeps growing.
Without obligation: mosquitoes.
How close to human
must the breathed-in air come
before it develops a sense of shame or humor?
Each day the falcon’s view a little clearer.
Excerpted from Ledger by Jane Hirshfield. Copyright © 2020 by Jane Hirshfield. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Listen to Jane Hirshfield read “Falcon”:
Jane Hirshfield shared her insight with S&H:
“The world’s events feel to me, more and more, unanswerable questions we are nonetheless called on to answer. For answerable questions, we have engineering, mathematics, repeatable recipes. For the unanswerable ones, we have art, music, poems.”
Read more from Jane Hirshfield: the poem “Practice.”
About the Author
Jane Hirshfield is the author of nine books of poetry and has edited and co-translated four books presenting the work of world poets from the past. Her books have received the Poetry Center Book Award, the California...
