Thanks to Daron Larson for sending on this beautiful poem.
Against Certainty
by Jane Hirschfield, from After
There is something out in the dark that wants to correct us.
Each time I think "this," it answers "that."
Answers hard, in the heart-grammar's strictness.
If I then say "that," it too is taken away.
Between certainty and the real, an ancient enmity.
When the cat waits in the path-hedge,
no cell of her body is not waiting.
This is how she is able so completely to disappear.
I would like to enter the silent portion as she does.
To live amid the great vanishing as a cat must live,
one shadow fully at ease inside another.
Against Certainty
by Jane Hirschfield, from After
There is something out in the dark that wants to correct us.
Each time I think "this," it answers "that."
Answers hard, in the heart-grammar's strictness.
If I then say "that," it too is taken away.
Between certainty and the real, an ancient enmity.
When the cat waits in the path-hedge,
no cell of her body is not waiting.
This is how she is able so completely to disappear.
I would like to enter the silent portion as she does.
To live amid the great vanishing as a cat must live,
one shadow fully at ease inside another.
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