It Was Like This: You Were Happy
#MidnightPoem by JANE HIRSHFIELD
“It Was Like This: You Were Happy”
BY JANE HIRSHFIELD
It was like this you were happy, then you were sad, then happy again, then not.
It went on.
You were innocent or you were guilty. Actions were taken, or not
At times you spoke, at other times you were silent. Mostly, it seems you were silent - what could you say?
Now it is almost over.
Like a lover, your life bends down and kisses your life.
It does this not in forgiveness - between you, there is nothing to forgive - but with the simple nod of a baker at the moment he sees the bread is finished with transformation
Eating, too, is a thing now only for others.
It doesn't matter what they will make of you or your days: they will be wrong, they will miss the wrong woman, miss the wrong man,
all the stories they tell will be tales of their own invention.
Your story was this: you were happy, then you were sad,
you slept, you awakened.
Sometimes you eat roasted chestnuts, sometimes persimmons.
Tonight's #midnightpoem is by Jane Hirshfield.
Jane Hirshfield (born 24 February 1953) is an American poet, essayist, and translator. A 2019 elected member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, her books include numerous award-winning collections of her own poems, collections of essays, and edited and co-translated volumes of world writers from the deep past.
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