The Happiness

Jack Hirschman

 
There's a happiness, a joy
in one soul, that's been
buried alive in everyone
and forgotten.
It isn't your barroom joke
or tender, intimate humor
or affections of friendliness
or big, bright pun.
They're the surviving survivors
of what happened when happiness
was buried alive, when
it no longer looked out
of today's eyes, and doesn't
even manifest when one
of us dies, we just walk away
from everything, alone
with what's left of us,
going on being human beings
without being human,
without that happiness.
 
Reprinted from Front Lines by permission of City Lights Books. Copyright © 2002 by Jack Hirschman. All rights reserved.

Poems by This Author

All That's Left by Jack Hirschman
All that's Left
Poets Eleven Poem by Jack Hirschman
Between the page with the heart


Further Reading

Poems about Happiness
Happily [excerpt]
by Lyn Hejinian
Afternoon on a Hill
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Compassion IV
by Noelle Kocot
Happiness
by Jane Kenyon
Plural Happiness
by David Rivard
The Place Where in the End / We Find Our Happiness
by Anne Boyer
The Study of Happiness
by Kenneth Koch