All things
are too small
to hold me,
I am so vast
In the Infinite
I reach
for the Uncreated
I have
touched it,
it undoes me
wider than wide
Everything else
is too narrow
You know this well,
you who are also there
Tighten
to nothing
the circle
that is
the world's things
Then the Naked
circle
can grow wide,
enlarging,
embracing all
—Hadewijch, l or ll (13th Century),
Jane Hirshfield version
Women in Praise of the Sacred
Of all that God has shown me
I can speak just the smallest word,
Not more than a honey bee
Takes on his foot
From an overspilling jar.
—Mechtild of Magdeburg
Jane Hirshfield version
Women in Praise of the Sacred
Within this tree
another tree
inhabits the same body;
within this stone
another stone rests,
its many shades of grey
the same,
its identical
surface and weight.
And within my body,
another body,
whose history, waiting,
sings: there is no other body,
it sings,
there is no other world.
—Jane Hirshfield
I came to realize clearly that mind is no other than
mountains and rivers and the great wide earth,
the sun and the moon and the stars.—Dogen
... in the case of trees and certain other forms of plant life, they already have a structure that expresses perfectly a timeless life in more than three dimensions. Being motionless, the only movement is that of their growth, which leaves a solid trail of wood behind in much the same way we ourselves are leaving a long stream of ghostly images.
The tree's shape is its history, each bough the curve of a magnificent time statue which I can assure you that we folk Upstairs appreciate just as enthusiastically as do you humans.
—Alan Moore
Jerusalem
Every year a given tree creates absolutely from scratch ninety-nine percent of its living parts.
Water lifting up tree trunks can climb one hundred and fifty feet an hour; in full summer a tree can, and does, heave a ton of water every day. A big elm in a single season might make as many as six million leaves, wholly intricate, without budging an inch; I couldn't make one.
A tree stands there, accumulating deadwood, mute and rigid as an obelisk, but secretly it seethes, it splits, sucks and stretches; it heaves up tons and hurls them out in a green, fringed fling.
No person taps this free power; the dynamo in the tulip tree pumps out even more tulip tree, and it runs on rain and air.
—Annie Dillard
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Within this tree
another tree
inhabits the same body;
within this stone
another stone rests,
its many shades of grey
the same,
its identical
surface and weight.
And within my body,
another body,
whose history, waiting,
sings: there is no other body,
it sings,
there is no other world.
—Jane Hirshfield
1025 molecules
are enough
to call woodthrush or apple.
A hummingbird, fewer.
A wristwatch: 1024.
An alphabet's molecules,
tasting of honey, iron and salt,
cannot be counted–
as some strings, untouched,
sound when a near one is speaking.
As it was when love slipped inside us.
It looked out to face in every direction.
Then it was inside the tree, the rock, the cloud.
—Jane Hirshfield
 |
Andromeda Galaxy, Bersonic |
Little soul,
you have wandered
lost a long time.
The woods all dark now,
birded and eyed.
Then a light, a cabin, a fire,
a door standing open.
The fairy tales warn you:
Do not go in,
you who would eat will be eaten.
You go in. You quicken.
You want to have feet.
You want to have eyes.
You want to have fears.
—Jane Hirshfield
Amor Fati
Poetry, 2017
