You Near It In Circles
Toward the Infinite
by Jane Hirshfield
You might take it for a given:
how numbers climb
first quickly,
then more slowly toward the infinite,
the way an aging man climbs stairs
first with a hand to the banister,
then pausing between landings,
then not at all.
Or the desert fathers
hunting their God from the beehived caves–
how hunger brought him closer,
lessened the distance between eye and star,
as light became only an absence
of the long familiar dark.
You near it in circles, the way
a dog circles his sleep before lying down:
the ascetics die with their gnosis
concealed among them, sifted, particular sand.
The man moves to a ground-floor flat and brews his tea,
the numbers continue in lengthy approach.
And your eye for a moment settles
on the breast of a strange girl;
you know her then entirely
before she passes out of view.