{T..he Magic Box Photographie}*
🔘 centrality of all-consciousness
My Debt °°°°°
.
Like all
who believe in the senses,
I was an accountant,
copyist,
statistician.
Not registrar,
witness.
Permitted to touch
the leaf of a thistle,
the trembling
work of a spider.
To ponder the Hubble’s recordings.
It did not matter
if I believed in
the party of particle or of wave,
as I carried no weapon.
It did not matter if I believed.
I weighed ashes,
actions,
cities that glittered like rubies,
on the scales I was given,
calibrated
in units of fear and amazement.
I wrote the word it, the word is.
I entered the debt that is owed to the real.
Forgive,
spine-covered leaf, soft-bodied spider,
octopus lifting
one curious tentacle back toward the hand of the diver
that in such black ink
I set down your flammable colors.
⚛︎
I told a friend I’d written a poem I was afraid of, and she asked to see it. As soon as I sent it, I was gripped with remorse: How could I let such darkness enter her psyche? She is a person who brings immense good into this world. And in that moment of regret, I suddenly realized something else: that to despair completely is, quite simply, rude to the beauty of the living world still all around us. Awe is still possible, crickets sing in the dark, there are still pelicans, manatees, diatoms, donkeys, the Tiburon lily that grows only on one hilltop not far from my home. I then wrote what became the final poem in the book, “My Debt,” as acknowledgment and praise of all that still lives, and to offer explicit apology for the descriptions in so many of the poems that precede it: “Forgive … that in such black ink I set down your flammable colors.”
Jane Hirshfield, Ledger (2020)
.
"And yet, even as she asks forgiveness of the “spine-covered leaf” and the “soft-bodied spider”, the fact she “set[s] down” their colours in the octopus’ own “black ink” suggests a will to speak not just for them but through them."
.
दिल एक मंदिर है,
दिल एक मंदिर है
प्यार की जिस्मे होती है पूजा
यह प्रीतम का घर है
🔘 centrality of all-consciousness
My Debt °°°°°
.
Like all
who believe in the senses,
I was an accountant,
copyist,
statistician.
Not registrar,
witness.
Permitted to touch
the leaf of a thistle,
the trembling
work of a spider.
To ponder the Hubble’s recordings.
It did not matter
if I believed in
the party of particle or of wave,
as I carried no weapon.
It did not matter if I believed.
I weighed ashes,
actions,
cities that glittered like rubies,
on the scales I was given,
calibrated
in units of fear and amazement.
I wrote the word it, the word is.
I entered the debt that is owed to the real.
Forgive,
spine-covered leaf, soft-bodied spider,
octopus lifting
one curious tentacle back toward the hand of the diver
that in such black ink
I set down your flammable colors.
⚛︎
I told a friend I’d written a poem I was afraid of, and she asked to see it. As soon as I sent it, I was gripped with remorse: How could I let such darkness enter her psyche? She is a person who brings immense good into this world. And in that moment of regret, I suddenly realized something else: that to despair completely is, quite simply, rude to the beauty of the living world still all around us. Awe is still possible, crickets sing in the dark, there are still pelicans, manatees, diatoms, donkeys, the Tiburon lily that grows only on one hilltop not far from my home. I then wrote what became the final poem in the book, “My Debt,” as acknowledgment and praise of all that still lives, and to offer explicit apology for the descriptions in so many of the poems that precede it: “Forgive … that in such black ink I set down your flammable colors.”
Jane Hirshfield, Ledger (2020)
.
"And yet, even as she asks forgiveness of the “spine-covered leaf” and the “soft-bodied spider”, the fact she “set[s] down” their colours in the octopus’ own “black ink” suggests a will to speak not just for them but through them."
.
दिल एक मंदिर है,
दिल एक मंदिर है
प्यार की जिस्मे होती है पूजा
यह प्रीतम का घर है