9.
The weather came from the east this time
as low as the sun in the west and the sun
And the weather crossed swords over young leaves
glowing green against gray. And the tulips held.
The gray face came down and looked into the street’s eyes
and this was the first of May. Swallows follow a storm
like they have just won an argument with God
and the prize, so small we can’t see it, is everywhere.
8.
Nothing more can happen in April so I am waiting
The rain is waiting too clouds simmering in the south
The grass wants to touch you but looks away waiting
The buildings with their hands in their pockets
Gather quietly but keep a respectful distance
the afternoons light as if held up by balloons
The month has filled out the world so much its last
day will be empty it will need a day to decompress
The last hours gather around you like referees
watching an instant replay because nothing more
can happen: you have to compress the month
in your mind while the days decompress
so quickly that your memory leaps in slow motion
and the hours nod and blow their whistles
A string stretching across the stars and sky draws closer
a jump-rope in slow motion at the top of its arc
Just before you hear the sound of its rasp
on the sidewalk you must skip casually
into May your soul barely leaving the ground
because it is all so light now and you want to come back
Note: Mary Tang, a poet I follow and who has been translating my Spring Songs series into Chinese, wrote recently about her grandmother’s life and death, and after reading those posts on her blog I was moved to write the poem below. It is posted with her permission, and directly below is her translation.
If you die on a holiday expect to be buried without ceremony
in the vacant space between an extended celebration
and getting back to business as usual but there is nothing
more usual than the dead Above her unclaimed grave
power lines have been hung where a marker might
have been a tree is growing It may only be growing
because those lines opened up the sky for it to grow
from the matter forgotten by sons but the tree’s leaves
are her prayer flags and the wind rushing the gap
are all the other sons sweeping her grave, they remember
that we were all once inanimate matter we were all
each other’s mother even unintelligent motion
generates respect and love the hum of the old world’s
roots is louder than a foot print on the moon
*
7.
Argument of April hail
does not convince a leaf
Cold wind cannot decide
what to turn its back to
comes back around knowing
it can’t come back
6.
Lightning in the western sky over mountains.
East are riverstones of stars blinking through
the swift current of clouds.
Wherever I look across a rainy day and night
I see the soundless ocean floor of mind:
Silt of words that have not shifted for months
covers the breasthook of an overturned boat.
From a calm black gap in the burdenboards
the season shoots and flowers like an octopus
5.
As the space between branches fills in
The incomplete sky gets more interesting:
The less I see the more it takes shape.
The more I see in the mirror the less
I recognize at this age: a sign I’m not looking at
the right space or what fills it in
4.
Mid-April moths insistent as saints.
A nest on the top of the maple
a sewn shape that withstood winter
by being empty. A hornet drops
from the blind to my windowsill.
3.
Spring’s caravan keeps coming, without effort
like a casual daydream of autumn
lightened by pollen colored lenses
settles everywhere until you cannot remove
your spring eyes and realize the daydream
was winter. The mountain takes
on color like it’s coming down with something.
2.
Each time I clear the fence of another day
I am trespassing onto the future’s yard
Like the deer behind the house
alarmed to find open space by the trees leaping
fence after fence and just as quickly gone
[4.14.15]
1.
Spring storms roam across the valley.
On the maple, leaves appear like gypsy tents.
Wind off the mountainside ruffles the green edges:
inside one of the leaves sits a woman at a fortune telling table
laying the lone card of summer face-down.
Translations from the English 