Compass Rose. Arthur Sze

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СКАЧАТЬ a flat basket catch sunlight —

      we enter a village built in the shape

      of an ox, stride up an arched bridge

      over white lilies; along houses, water,

      coursing in alleyways, connects ponds.

      Kiwis hang from branches by a moon

      door. We step into a two-story hall

      with a light well and sandalwood panels:

      in a closet off the mahjong room

      is a bed for clandestine encounters.

      A cassia tree shades a courtyard

      corner; phoenix-tail bamboos line

      the horse-head walls. The branching

      of memory resembles these interconnected

      waterways: a chrysanthemum odor

      permeates the air, but I can’t locate it.

      Soldiers fire mortars at enemy bunkers,

      while Afghan farmers pause then resume

      slicing poppy bulbs and draining resin.

      A caretaker checks on his clients’ lawns

      and swimming pools. The army calls —

      he swerves a golf cart into a ditch —

      the surf slams against black lava rock,

      against black lava rock — and a welt

      spreads across his face. Hunting for

      a single glow-in-the-dark jigsaw piece,

      we find incompletion a spark.

      We volley an orange Ping-Pong ball

      back and forth: hungers and fears

      spiral through us, forming a filament

      by which we heat into cesium light.

      And, in the flowing current, we slice

      back and forth — topspin, sidespin —

      the erasure of history on the arcing ball.

      Snow on the tips of forsythia dissolves

      within hours. A kestrel circles overhead,

      while we peer into a canyon and spot

      caves but not a macaw petroglyph.

      Yesterday, we looked from a mesa tip

      across the valley to Chimayó, tin roofs

      glinting in sunlight. Today, willows

      extend one-inch shoots; mourning cloaks

      flit along the roadside; a red-winged

      blackbird calls. Though the March world

      leafs and branches, I ache at how

      mortality fissures the lungs:

      and the pangs resemble ice forming,

      ice crystals, ice that resembles the wings

      of cicadas, ice flowers, drift ice, ice

      that forms at the edges of a rock

      midstream, thawing hole in ice, young

      shore ice, crack in ice caused by the tides.

      Scissors snip white chrysanthemum stalks —

      auburn through a black tea-bowl rim —

      is water to Siberian irises as art

      is to life? You have not taken care

      of tying your shoes — a few nanoseconds,

      a few thousand years — water catlaps

      up the Taf Estuary to a boathouse —

      herring shimmer and twitch in a rising net —

      rubbing blackthorn oil on her breasts —

      in a shed, words; below the cliff, waves —

      where å i åa ä e ö means island in the river —

      while a veteran rummages through trash,

      on Mars, a robot arm digs for ice —

      when the bow lifts from the D string,

      “This is no way to live,” echoes in his ears.

      Sandhill cranes call from the marsh,

      then, low, out of the southwest,

      three appear and drop into the water:

      their silhouettes sway in the twilight,

      the marsh surface argentine and black.

      Before darkness absorbs it all, I recall

      locks inscribed with lovers’ names

      on a waist-high chain extending along

      a path at the top of Yellow Mountain.

      She brushes her hair across his chest;

      he runs his tongue along her neck —

      reentering the earth’s atmosphere,

      a satellite ignites. A wavering line

      of cars issues north out of the bosque.

      The last shapes of cranes dissolve

      into vitreous darkness. Setting aside

      binoculars, I adjust the side-view

      mirror — our breath fogs the windshield.

      A complex of vibrating strings:

      this hand, that caress, this silk

      gauze СКАЧАТЬ