POEMS ABOUT JOY AND GIVING ONESELF UTTERLY TO ONE'S LIFE

Lake and Maple

I want to give myself

utterly

as this maple

that burned and burned

for three days without stinting

and then in two more

dropped off every leaf;

as this lake that,

no matter what comes

to its green-blue depths,

both takes and returns it.

In the still heart,

that refuses nothing,

the world is twice-born --

two earths wheeling,

two heavens,

two egrets reaching

down into subtraction;

even the fish

for an instant doubled,

before it is gone.

I want the fish.

I want the losing it all

when it rains and I want

the returning transparence.

I want the place

by the edge-flowers where

the shallow sand is deceptive,

where whatever

steps in must plunge,

and I want that plunging.

I want the ones

who come in secret to drink

only in early darkness,

and I want the ones

who are swallowed.

I want the way

this water sees without eyes,

hears without ears,

shivers without will or fear

at the gentlest touch.

I want the way it

accepts the cold moonlight

and lets it pass,

the way it lets

all of it pass

without judgment or comment.

There is a lake,

Lalla Ded sang, no larger

than one seed of mustard,

that all things return to.

O heart, if you

will not, cannot, give me the lake,

then give me the song.

Jane Hirschfield

Eternity

He who binds to himself a joy

Does the winged life destroy;

But he who kisses the joy as it flies

Lives in eternity's sun rise.

William Blake

 

Dithyramb of a Happy Woman

Song of excess,

strength, mighty tenderness,

pliant ecstasy.

Magnificence

lovingly dancing.

I quiver as a body in rapture,

I quiver as a wing,

I am an explosion,

I overstep myself,

I am a fountain,

I have its resilience.

Excess,

a thousand excesses,

strength,

song of gushing strength.

There are gifts in me,

flowerings of abundance,

curls of light are sobbing,

a flame is foaming, its lofty ripeness

is ripening.

Oceans of glare,

rosy as the palate

of a big mouth in ecstasy.

I am astonished

up to my nostrils, I snort,

a snorting universe of astonishment

inundates me.

I am gulping excess, I am choking with fullness,

I am impossible as reality.

Anna Swir, translated by Czeslaw Milosz