RENDANG. Will Harris

Чтение книги онлайн.

      State-Building

      Break a vase, says Derek Walcott, and the love

       that reassembles the fragments will be stronger than

      that love which took its symmetry for granted.

      When I read this, I can only think who broke it?

      In the British Museum, two black ‘figures’

      (they don’t say slaves) beat olives from a tree;

      a ‘naked youth’ stoops to gather the fallen

      fruit. The freeborn men elsewhere, safe behind

      their porticos, argue about the world’s

      true form, or talk of bee glue, used

      to seal the hive against attack, later called

      propolis, meaning that it has to come

      before – is crucial for – the building of a state.

      *

      Here it’s summer and bees groan inside

      the carcass of a split bin bag. A figure passes,

      is close to passed, when I see her face, half

      shadow, marked with sweat or tears, the folds

      beneath each downcast eye the same light

      brown as – oceans off – my grandma. Mak.

      Give me a love that’s unassimilated, sharp

      as broken pots. That can’t be taken; granted.

      My dad would work among the blue and white

      pieces of a Ming vase – his job to get it

      passable. He’d gather every bit and after days

      assembling, filling in (putty, spit, glue),

      draw forth – not sweetness – something new.