Letter to a Poet (Robert Hass)
October 26, 2009
A mockingbird leans
from the walnut, bellies,
riffling white, accomplishes
his perch upon the eaves.
I witnessed this act of grace
in blind California
in the January sun
where families bicycle on Saturday
and the mother with high cheekbones
and coffee-colored iridescent
hair curses her child
in the language of Pushkin–
John, I am dull from
thinking of your pain,
this mimic world
which make us stupid
with the totem griefs
we hope will give us
power to look at trees,
at stones, one brute to another
like poems on a page.
What can I say, my friend?
There are tricks of animal grace,
poems in the mind
we survive on. It isn’t much.
You are 4,000 miles away &
this world did not invite us.
*
This comes from a tremendous little volume of poems called Field Guide, published in 1973. Hass generously participated in Poets Q & A at smartishpace.com a few years back, an “interview” well worth reading if you have the time.
Blowing a Jug 