Jane Hirshfield
Ripeness
is what falls away
with ease.
Not only the heavy apple,
the pear,
but also the dried brown strands
of autumn iris from their core.
To let your body
love this world
that gave itself to your care
in all of its ripeness,
with ease,
and will take itself from you
in equal ripeness and ease,
is also harvest.
And however sharply
you are tested —
this sorrow, that great love —
it too will leave on that clean knife.
Jane Hirshfield, “Ripeness,” from The October Palace, Copyright © 1994. Reprinted with permission from the author.
Jane Hirshfield is one of the most celebrated, skilled poets in the world today. With a directness and sensitivity that seem unlikely to mix so well, her poems magnify the intersections of the sciences, spirituality and literary traditions. Also an essayist with strong Zen Buddhist training, Hirshfield — with a somehow palatable frankness — turns toward the crisis of the Earth and what is it to be human.
Hirshfield has been one of the most — if not the most — influential poets in my life. Her poem Ripeness is among my favorites. In a contemporary, dominant US culture that fears, battles and denies the natural facts of aging and death — in fact, impermanence of all kinds — Hirshfield offers an elegant antidote. Characteristic of her work, Ripeness illuminates paradox (including the joys and pains, limits and potentials of human embodiment) and reflects a both gentle and fierce abiding with it.
