What I wanted
wasn’t to let in the wetness.
That can be mopped.
Nor the cold.
There are blankets.
What I wanted was
the siren, the thunder, the neighbor,
the fireworks, the dog’s bark.
Which of them didn’t matter?
Yes, this world is perfect,
all things as they are.
But I wanted
not to be
the one sleeping soundly, on a soft pillow,
clean sheets untroubled,
dreaming there still might be time,
while this everywhere crying
_______________________
From The Asking by Jane Hirshfield. Copyright © 2023 by Jane Hirshfield. Excerpted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC, New York. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Jane Hirshfield
Jane Hirshfield is the author of ten much honored collections of poetry, including The Asking: New and Selected Poems (2023), two now-classic essay collections, and four volumes presenting and co-translating world poets from the deep past, including The Ink Dark Moon: Poems by Komachi and Shikibu; Mirabi: Ecstatic Poems; Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women; and The Heart of Haiku. Her own work has in turn been translated into seventeen languages. A former chancellor of The Academy of American Poets, she is an elected member of The American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
