Thursday, December 19, 2024

1169. Three Mornings - Jane Hirshfield

 


In Istanbul my ears

three mornings heard the early call to prayer.

At fuller light, heard birds then,

waterbirds and tree birds, birds of migration.

Like three knowledges,

I heard them: incomprehension,

sweetened distance longing.

When the body dies, where will they go,

these migrant birds and prayer calls,

as heat from sheets when taken from a dryer?

With voices of the ones I loved,

great loves and small loves, train wheels,

crickets, clock-ticks, thunder-where will they,

when in fragrant, tumbled heat they also leave?

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