Ah, love, o history, forgive
the squandered light and flung-down rags of chances,
old choices drifted terribly awry.
And world, self-portrait never right, receive this gift-
shuffling, spattered, stubborn,
something nameless opens in the heart: to touch
with soft-bent sable, ground earth pigment, seed-clear oil,
the rounding, bright-fleshed present, if not the past.

-Jane Hirscfield