{"id":91194,"date":"2017-04-24T12:01:16","date_gmt":"2017-04-24T11:01:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=91194"},"modified":"2017-04-23T17:49:07","modified_gmt":"2017-04-23T16:49:07","slug":"on-the-fifth-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/04\/on-the-fifth-day\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Fifth Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

That common ground between poetry and science is what poet Jane Hirshfield sows with splendor in this poem written for the 2017 March for Science<\/a> in Washington, D.C., protesting the anti-fact, anti-truth, anti-science political climate of the current American administration. (Maria Popova<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n

On the fifth day
\nthe scientists who studied the rivers
\nwere forbidden to speak
\nor to study the rivers.<\/p>\n

The scientists who studied the air
\nwere told not to speak of the air,
\nand the ones who worked for the farmers
\nwere silenced,
\nand the ones who worked for the bees.<\/p>\n

Someone, from deep in the Badlands,
\nbegan posting facts.<\/p>\n

The facts were told not to speak
\nand were taken away.
\nThe facts, surprised to be taken, were silent.<\/p>\n

Now it was only the rivers
\nthat spoke of the rivers,
\nand only the wind that spoke of its bees,<\/p>\n

while the unpausing factual buds of the fruit trees
\ncontinued to move toward their fruit.<\/p>\n

The silence spoke loudly of silence,
\nand the rivers kept speaking,
\nof rivers, of boulders and air.<\/p>\n

In gravity, earless and tongueless,
\nthe untested rivers kept speaking.<\/p>\n

Bus drivers, shelf stockers,
\ncode writers, machinists, accountants,
\nlab techs, cellists kept speaking.<\/p>\n

They spoke, the fifth day,
\nof silence.<\/p>\n

________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Award-winning poet, essayist, and translator Jane Hirshfield is the author of several collections of verse, including <\/em>The Beauty (2015), a finalist for the National Book Award, <\/em>Come, Thief (2011), <\/em>After (2006), shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot prize, and <\/em>Given Sugar, Given Salt (2001), a finalist for the National Book Critics Award, among others. Hirshfield published her first poem in 1973, shortly after graduating from Princeton as a member of the university\u2019s first graduating class to include women. She put aside her writing for nearly eight years, however, to study at the San Francisco Zen Center. \u201cI felt that I\u2019d never make much of a poet if I didn\u2019t know more than I knew at that time about what it means to be a human being,\u201d Hirshfield once said. \u201cI don\u2019t think poetry is based just on poetry; it is based on a thoroughly lived life. And so I couldn\u2019t just decide I was going to write no matter what; I first had to find out what it means to <\/em>live.<\/em>\u201d<\/em>(Poetry Foundation<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That common ground between poetry and science is what poet Jane Hirshfield sows with splendor in this poem written for the 2017 March for Science in Washington, D.C., protesting the anti-fact, anti-truth, anti-science political climate of the current American administration. (Maria Popova)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry-format"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91194\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}