Friday, May 28, 2010

EMBRACING THIS WORLD: HIRSCH'S EARTHLY LIGHT




EARTHLY LIGHT


4.
I remember the warm day in winter
when I stood on a hotel balcony listening
to bells ringing in the distance.

I had just seen all those galleries
of seventeenth-century light slipping
through interior courtyards and alleys,

branding doors and ceilings, pressing down
lightly on skulls of buildings.
I had just seen rhetorics of light flashing

on curtains and tablecloths, mirrors
and windows, old maps and well-preserved
canvases varnished and framed.

I was alone, and for a while I stared
into a sky washed clean by rain,
an atmosphere luminous and polished,

ready to ascend, transparent as wings.
I saw tugboats pulling heavy barges
up and down the ice-filled river

while a white disc flamed overhead
and hands of purple light that resembled
bruises drifted and gradually dispersed.

I thought of northern skies flooded
with blue and gray, of monochromatic clouds
and rain-soaked wind blowing across the plains.

I thought of a landscape flattened
like unbleached canvas and steeped
in vertiginous greens, of the artists

who could liquefy thickest sunlight,
and the tangible, earth-colored country
that was all there would be to paint.

That February day I looked directly
into a wintry, invisible world
and that was when I turned away

from the God or gods I had wanted
so long and so much to believe in.
That was when I hurried down the stairs

into a street already crowded with people.
Because this world, too, needs our unmixed
attention, because it is not heaven

but earth that needs us, because
it is only earth – limited, sensuous
earth that is so fleeting, so real.


~ Edward Hirsch, from Earthly Measures

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Note: "Unmixed attention" is Simone Weil's definition of prayer.


Hirsch seems attracted to religion (note that this section starts with church bells ringing in the distance), and it’s likely that he’s read (or tried to read) Simone Weil’s Waiting for God. But ultimately, like Jack Gilbert, he “refuses heaven.” 

That February day I looked directly
into a wintry, invisible world
and that was when I turned away

from the God or gods I had wanted
so long and so much to believe in.

He turns to fully accepting and celebrating the earth. Only Jack Gilbert goes further and says, "We have already lived in paradise." 

But my favorite lines in Hirsch's poem are these:

I had just seen all those galleries
of seventeenth-century light slipping
through interior courtyards and alleys,

branding doors and ceilings, pressing down
lightly on skulls of buildings.

-- that seventeenth-century light slipping through courtyards and alleys slips into me forever. "Skulls of buildings" is brilliant.  Edward Hirsch is one of our greatest living poets. I find him more interesting and versatile than W. S. Merwin or Jack Gilbert.  


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