There are times when, no matter how I try, the words don’t come. Or they do, but they won’t  do what I mean them to. Instead they huddle on the page, lumpish and inert. Maybe Hirshfield was feeling some of that when she wrote this poem.






The Tongue Says Loneliness

by Jane Hirshfield














The tongue says loneliness, anger, grief,

but does not feel them.
As Monday cannot feel Tuesday,

nor Thursday

reach back to Wednesday

as a mother reaches out for her found child.

As this life is not a gate, but the horse plunging through it.

Not a bell,

but the sound of the bell in the bell-shape,

lashing full strength with the first blow from inside the iron.