Three Poems by Kimiko Hahn

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

Stealing a Line Written by Hafiz and Translated by Emerson

“Not for nothing,” she tells me on the phone
in answer to why move to another borough,

“he lives between a crowded cemetery

and the elevated where I walk our pit-bulls”
to which I respond,

See how the roses burn! See how

the mother misses the daughters
who she once promptly handed over to a hundred babysitters.

See how the mother longs for each — 
the one who overlooks tombs

and the other who texts from Village bars. See
how the mother wishes for a daughter

to stop in for cake and coffee — 
it is spring, time for buds then bushes

of blossoms and thorns, as she burns
with an ardor she thought she’d lost.

The young woman replies,
“What can I say except come over on the Q —

I make a serious espresso.”
I’ll first stop by the bodega, partial as I am to lemon peel,

then burn those roses myself
(today the mother won’t perish).

Solitary & Gregarious

Playing with the First Line of Keats’ “On the Grasshopper and the Cricket”

I agree that “The poetry of earth is never dead”
but wonder about the grasshopper:

of course not objectively awful,
especially a solitary one as in Keats’ poem,

by the billions they bring famine and dread. Or is that the locust?

I try googling grasshopper
and find no taxonomical difference. Furthermore

Sir Boris Petrovich Uvarov who, studying the desert locust,
realized that what was considered two separate species

was merely two phases, solitary and gregarious. In fact,
they form bands as nymphs then swarm as adults

covering hundreds of square miles,
stripping fields and causing, as we know from Sunday School, famine.

I also see that transformation is induced by overcrowding

and constant contact. Aside from the Plagues of Egypt,
the horror of a cloud of locusts descending on one’s person and property

has inspired horror films including the 1971 cult classic,
The Abominable Doctor Phibes starring Vincent Price

where Nurse Allen is devoured by said species.

Although the reverse is true, too: that some cultures take a kind of revenge
consuming them as a delicacy. In general I find insects

awe-inspiring but prefer to read about them in books or online.
Maybe viewing them in the garden but certainly not inside.
The same with guests to our home, a cul-de-sac on Long Island.

On a Line from Valéry by Way of Carolyn Kizer: Tout le ciel vert se meurt. Le dernier arbre brûle.

The whole green sky is dying
in a riot of blue leaves and levees, a tumult

of sandbags and groceries. Also
the frantic seam in the hill, desolate wheat in the silo,

rank tap water, as well as swollen lobsters in the trap
and hands assembling tractors.

The one who condemns poverty of purse and spirit
will be a spinner without faith,

because the atheist’s heart is far less
contaminated, truth to tell.

Kimiko Hahn’s latest collection, Toxic Flora (W. W. Norton, 2010), contains poems triggered by science. She is collaborating on a translation of Japanese zuihitsu and teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation at Queens College, CUNY.