Now a darkness is coming…

chaos – choice – commitment

Now A Darkness is Coming
by Jane Hirshfield

I hold my life with two hands.
I walk with two legs.
Two ears are enough to hear Bach with.
Blinded in one eye, a person sees with the other.
Now a great darkness is coming.
A both-eyes darkness.
I have one mouth.
It holds two words.
Yes, No,
inside all others.
Yes. No. No. Yes.
I say yes to these words, as I must,
and I also refuse them.
My two legs,
shaped to go forward,
obedient to can’t-know and must-be,
walk into the time that is coming.

“Now A Darkness is Coming” from LEDGER: Poems by Jane Hirshfield. Published 2020 by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.