To be a person is an untenable proposition.
Odd of proportion,
upright,
unbalanced of body, feeling, and mind.
Two predators’ eyes
face forward,
yet seem always to be trying to look back.
Unhooved, untaloned fingers
seem to grasp mostly grief and pain.
To create, too often, mostly grief and pain.
Some take,
in witnessed suffering, pleasure.
Some make, of witnessed suffering, beauty.
On the other side—
a creature capable of blushing,
who chooses to spin until dizzy,
likes what is shiny,
demands to stay awake even when sleepy.
Learns what is basic, what acid,
what are stomata, nuclei, jokes,
which birds are flightless.
Learns to play four-handed piano.
To play, when it is needed, one-handed piano.
Hums. Feeds strays.
Says, “All together now, on three.”
To be a person may be possible then, after all.
Or the question may be considered still at least open—
an unused drawer, a pair of waiting work-boots.
—Jane Hirshfield
Jane Hirshfield’s The Asking: New & Selected Poems 1971–2023 will appear from Knopf in the fall of 2023. In 2022 she served as the Seamus Heaney International Visiting Poet at Queens University, Belfast.
