Jane Zwart
​

Hymnody

In a room with ruined blinds, someone
is writing a poem, someone is singing

alto under the angels: someone else;
she makes melody her dependent.
​
Someone else--

                               Here the conditions
for beauty are ripe. I own a spoon

meant only for honey; hawks cross
the yard, large as puppies, on the other side

of the glass my desk faces; I can spare
my son tangerines when he asks

for oranges, when he wants to drive studs
of clove into their skins like the orphans

in his book, kids who scare off spirits
simply by making pomanders. He asks.

I am writing a poem—and not, like
someone, in an ill-favored place; I have only

to harmonize. I mean there are hymns
that scoop something from the earth--

opal, son, quill of Hawk’s red tail--
and hold it under a stronger light,

and there are hymns that borrow
nothing. Someone teaches an apple

to leap, polished, from her sleeve;
in a room with ruined blinds, she is
​
writing a poem, someone is adorning
an orchard never meant to fruit

---

Conditional Love Poem

It does not take many folding chairs or much distance
to remind me that I might not have found you. Without
sons, without friends, in a row of people we do not know,
you look suddenly, distressingly separate: a man who could
have had another life.
​
                                         A long time ago, a stranger snatched
the X at the back of my overalls before I could cross
the street that a box truck barrelled down. Which is how--
on seeing you, seated among strangers—I recognize
this affront as relief, as gratitude almost outraged.

---

--
Jane Zwart teaches at Calvin University, where she also co-directs the Calvin Center for Faith & Writing. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, Threepenny Review, TriQuarterly, and Ploughshares, as well as other poetry journals and magazines. Along with Timothy Liu, she serves as a reviews editor for Plume.