Jane Hirshfield



Jane Hirshfield is the author of six collections of poetry. Her many honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Academy of American Poets. She is also the author of a now classic book of essays, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry, and editor and co-translator of The Ink Dark Moon: Poems by Komachi and Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Court of Japan. A seminar devoted to her work as poet and translator took place at Waseda University in spring 2009. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.



GREEN-STRIPED MELONS


They lie
under stars in a field.
They lie under rain in a field.
Under sun.

Some people
are like this as well --
like a painting
hidden beneath another painting.

An unexpected weight
the sign of their ripeness.






BAMBOO


What exists wants to persist.
Even the knock of bamboo on bamboo
spilled outward continues.
And you who have lived -- restless, ambitious, aggrieved.
Who have answered to Walter, to Shirley, to Tim.
To Carlos, to Teisha, to Haavo.
Do not think it unchanged, this world you are leaving.
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