Gift

By Czeslaw Milosz

A day so happy.
Fog lifted early, I worked in the garden.
Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers.
There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.
I knew no one worth my enying him.
Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.
To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.
In my body I felt no pain.
When straightening up, I saw the blue sea and sails.

The Door

By Jane Hirschfield

A note waterfalls steadily
through us,
just below hearing.

Or this early light
Streaming through dusty glass:
what enters, enters like that,
unstoppable gift.
And yet there is also the other,
the breath-space held between any call
and its answer -

In the querying
first scuff of footstep,
the wood owl's repeating,
the two-counting heart:

a little Sabbath,
minnow whose brightness slivers past time.

The rest-note,
unwritten,
hinged between worlds,
that precedes change and allows it.

Readings of February 17, 2008