This poem by an American Buddhist poet reflects on vicissitude by looking back when life is over. What stays with you? What does it mean? The poem strips away the dramas and interpretations that embellish our experience leaving just the raw material

It Was Like This: You Were Happy

It was like this:

you were happy, then you were sad,

then happy again, then not.

It went on.

You were innocent or you were guilty.

Actions were taken, or not.

At times you spoke, at other times you were silent.

Mostly, it seems you were silent—what could you say?

Now it is almost over.

Like a lover, your life bends down and kisses your life.

It does this not in forgiveness—

between you, there is nothing to forgive—

but with the simple nod of a baker at the moment

he sees the bread is finished with transformation.

Eating, too, is a thing now only for others.

It doesn’t matter what they will make of you

or your days: they will be wrong,

they will miss the wrong woman, miss the wrong man,

all the stories they tell will be tales of their own invention.

Your story was this: you were happy, then you were sad,

you slept, you awakened.

Sometimes you ate roasted chestnuts, sometimes persimmons.

Jane Hirschfield

This poem by an American Buddhist poet a reflects on vicissitude by looking back when life is over. What stays with you? What does it mean? The poem strips away the dramas and interpretations that embellish our experience leaving just the raw material.

So what is the raw material of our lives? There is the stream of vedana:  you were happy, then you were sad, then happy again, then not.  At the time, perhaps, the reasons for our unhappiness consumed our attention, but now they have faded away it’s just what happened. You were innocent  – as a plaintiff is innocent or perhaps as a child is;  or you were guilty  – as a criminal or perhaps as an anxious person who simply feels guilty. Things happened, actions were taken; but all that is past now. The simplicity of the expression tells us that we shall remember and note what happens but not celebrate, regret or interpret it.

Perhaps it was like this even at the time:  At times you spoke, at other times you were silent. Mostly, it seems you were silent—what could you say?  In fact, we mostly say a lot about our lives as we explain ourselves to ourselves, justify ourselves to others or complain about what others have done to us. But what, in the end, do all those words mean? Can words ever really explain our experience?

Now it is almost over and now the self that fusses over experience is somehow absent, even as we reflect on what has happened. There is just existence turning back on itself, in an act of tenderness: Like a lover, your life bends down and kisses your life.

This is not an examination and there is no judgment here, so there is also no question of fault or blame:

It does this not in forgiveness—

between you, there is nothing to forgive—

Now there is no more wondering how one’s life will turn out. This act of recognition, is how it has turned out: just like this. There is only the creator’s acknowledgement of completion.

… the simple nod of a baker at the moment

he sees the bread is finished with transformation.

The end is very near: eating, too, is a thing now only for others. And the meaning of this moment of clarity is emerging:

It doesn’t matter what they will make of you

or your days: they will be wrong,

they will miss the wrong woman, miss the wrong man,

all the stories they tell will be tales of their own invention.

The stories told by the ‘you’ of this poem have quietened into the mere being of which Wallace Stevens wrote on his own deathbed:

You know then that it is not the reason

That makes us happy or unhappy.

The bird sings. Its feathers shine.

But the itch to explain persists in others and their stories continue. They will make something of their own out of you, which is very different from the bakers recognition that your own transformation is complete. These will be tales of their own invention, not the truth. Only you can know that, but you can’t make an explanation from it. Finally, when the moment of death shades us from the worldly winds, there is just the thing itself. What happened and what happened next:

Your story was this: you were happy, then you were sad,

you slept, you awakened.

Sometimes you ate roasted chestnuts, sometimes persimmons.