What Follows Is a Transcript Syndicated From on Being, of an Interview Between Krista Tippett and Jane Hirshfield. You Can Listen to the Audio of This interview her

cricket do? It sings, because that is its nature, because that is what it has to offer, because it delights in this moment in the sun, because it is on a branch and not yet drowned. And so I feel like our entire lives are in, you know, that haiku, 17 syllables in the Japanese. And I have never forgotten that.

And I’ve never forgotten another haiku by Issa, very different, but equally, profoundly addressing our human condition in this moment, now — written, you know, hundreds of years ago in a different language, a different culture, a different set of crises. He says, “In this world we walk on the roof of hell gathering blossoms.” And when I first encountered that haiku, I thought it was a portrait of a kind of bitterness; that, you know, here we are on the roof of hell, and what do we do? And my feeling about it has completely changed over the years, because I now feel, you know, every inch of ground on this Earth has seen unfathomable suffering, some of it human, some of it not human, but there is no inch of Earth which is not soaked in suffering. But there is also no inch of Earth which is not soaked in joy and in beauty and in radiance.

Tippett:I want to ask you about something — I believe this was also something you said in another interview. It spoke to me, so this is kind of a personal question, but you spoke of “the sense of exile I have always felt.” And I also wonder if that speaks to holding a sense of the fullness of things — even that image of the cricket, right? — that there’s a cost to that, or — “cost” is not the right word. But there’s a way in which holding that or just desiring or committing to hold that, it separates you from the world’s — from what is so around us, what we’re so trained to want, which is a drive to ease and clarity and convenience.

Hirshfield:I often think of the emotions as being information. They are needed information. They are our internal weather, but they are also our weathervane. And if you feel a sense of exile, it is telling you that there is something you need to do to find your right home, to find your sense of your own fullness of life. We are creatures who long for beauty. We are creatures who long for connection. We are creatures who long for largeness. You know, every ploy of the cheapest-trick advertisement is based on a genuine longing. And of course, the practice of Zen has a very interesting relationship to longing, because it both works with it and also holds it a little lightly.

Within the worldview of Buddhism, both are true: there is suffering, and it is our job to try to end it; and the perfection of things as they are is already here around us. We cannot escape from perfection, we cannot escape from suffering, most of the time. And they are not separate. How we feel them is the weather of this moment and the spiritual tenor of who we are at this moment in our lives.

But I hope there is no human being who has not had one moment, at least, when they stood in the world, undone by awe and radiance, and the small self vanishes, and you understand the world as immense and yours, and not yours.

Tippett:Let me ask you, I mean, that brings us really full-circle back to the notion of the human task being to acknowledge the fullness of things, even if in moments and glimpses. As you look at our world now — so I want to kind of ask you this hopeful question. I mean, do you — are there ways — where do you look, or maybe even you’re just going to tell me about something that happened yesterday for 10 minutes. But are there ways in which you see a capacity that is emergent or that is trustworthy, to know that fullness, to acknowledge it despite all the ways we flee it and deny it and shortchange it? Are there ways in which we, this “we” of now, that there’s — that this sense of the fullness of things is sneaking up on us?

Hirshfield:Well, an odd word rose to my mind as you were asking that, which was “vulnerability” — that the great gate to abundance is simply to feel yourself able to be porous, to be open to whatever is put in the bowl that is yours to hold with your 10 fingers and 54 bones. And that is abundance.

And I remember, some years ago, there was the enormous earthquake in Haiti. And I remember watching a news anchor, an American news anchor speaking about the fear of chaos and looting and cultural breakdown. And as that anchor said those words, what you could hear and see behind them was people who were sleeping out in the dark because there were being aftershocks, and they weren’t safe in the buildings. And what were they doing? They were singing. What the reality was, behind that newsperson’s back, was so completely different from what was being evoked by the description. They were singing. They were singing in the dark together.

Tippett:I would like for you to read — for you to read, this time — “Let Them Not Say,” but I want to ask you if there’s anything else you’d like to read, as well.

Hirshfield:Well, can I offer — I don’t know if you’ll be able to slip this in, because it’s so out of the flow of the conversation for me to offer it. But there is a one-line poem, which I think does speak, perhaps, to what we were just talking about. It speaks to the magnitude of our human hearts, spirits, souls, lives …

Tippett:Yes, please, read it.

Hirshfield:… in any circumstance. So the poem is one sentence long, and its title is “Sentence,” in both the grammatical and the judicial sense. And it says: “The body of a starving horse does not forget the size it was born to.” “The body of a starving horse does not forget the size it was born to.”

And, you know, that is biologically true. The skeleton does not grow smaller. But in writing it, even though I thought I was writing what the words say, something in me understood, even as they came from my pen, that what I was trying to evoke was the sense of the magnitude of a human being, under any circumstance, is there. It cannot be erased, cannot be erased.

So I will read “Let Them Not Say.” But your reading will be so much better. [laughs]

Tippett:[laughs] It was a gift from you to me, and everybody who reads it.

Hirshfield:[laughs] And a gift from you to me.

“Let Them Not Say.”

“Let them not say:   we did not see it.
We saw.

“Let them not say:   we did not hear it.
We heard.

“Let them not say:     they did not taste it.
We ate, we trembled.

“Let them not say:   it was not spoken, not written.
We spoke,
we witnessed with voices and hands.

“Let them not say:     they did nothing.
We did not-enough.

“Let them say, as they must say something:

“A kerosene beauty.
It burned.

“Let them say we warmed ourselves by it,
read by its light, praised,
and it burned.”

Tippett:Thank you.

Hirshfield:Thank you, Krista. I’m so grateful. You know, we could’ve had this conversation at a friend’s house or in a park or in a restaurant, and I would be so happy just to be able to have such a conversation.

[music: “Palms Down” by Blue Dot Sessions]

Tippett:Jane Hirshfield is the author of books of poetry including The Beauty, Come, Thief, and most recently, Ledger, from which we read this hour. She’s also written two books of essays, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry and Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World.

[music: “Palms Down” by Blue Dot Sessions]

The On Being Project is: Chris Heagle, Laurén Drommerhausen, Erin Colasacco, Eddie Gonzalez, Lilian Vo, Lucas Johnson, Suzette Burley, Zack Rose, Colleen Scheck, Julie Siple, Gretchen Honnold, Jhaleh Akhavan, Pádraig Ó Tuama, Ben Katt, Gautam Srikishan, Lillie Benowitz, April Adamson, Ashley Her, Matt Martinez, and Amy Chatelaine.

The On Being Project is located on Dakota land. Our lovely theme music is provided and composed by Zoë Keating. And the last voice that you hear, singing at the end of our show, is Cameron Kinghorn.

On Being is an independent, nonprofit production of The On Being Project. It is distributed to public radio stations by WNYC Studios. I created this show at American Public Media.

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The Fetzer Institute, helping to build the spiritual foundation for a loving world. Find them at fetzer.org;

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And the Ford Foundation, working to strengthen democratic values, reduce poverty and injustice, promote international cooperation, and advance human achievement worldwide.

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“Let Them Not Say,” “The Bowl,” “Some Questions,” and “Cataclysm” from LEDGER: POEMS by Jane Hirshfield, copyright © 2020 by Jane Hirshfield. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

“My Species” from THE BEAUTY: POEMS by Jane Hirshfield, compilation copyright © 2015 by Jane Hirshfield. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

“For What Binds Us” From Of Gravity & Angels © 1988 by Jane Hirshfield. Published by Wesleyan University Press. Used by permission.