Untitled Moment in the Middle of the First Night of April
Incense rises up the wall
in front of my mother’s painting
A village clings to a cliff a thousand
white rooms open to the sun
No separation of inside or outside
to me this painting is a memory
Of her, about memory about how something
no longer exists but still exists
Like smoke from an incense stick
it is entirely spent lighter than air
More solid than the air we breathe
my mother painted it from a photograph
To learn perspective
When the ground is soft enough for the spirit to stretch
beyond the numbers of endings and the numbers of beginnings
And the numbers stiff in stone grow warm in the spring sun
the cemetery down the hill fills with people walking.
I can tell the ones who aren’t ghosts because they notice my children
playing on the one patch of stoneless level grass just inside the gates.
The other ones are distracted by an old song in their ears.
The other ones, the ones carrying a large number in their arms
that is always one number larger than the last number they had
when the number was invisible and weightless and fit in a back pocket.
Some numbers are meant to catch, it is why they are shaped like lures.
Zero doesn’t catch, zero falls out of your pocket and you never miss it
And when you see it fall out of the laundry with the dryer sheet
you don’t worry that it’s ruined the rest of the clothes. A young
couple walk past us, hop over a stone wall on the way
to photograph tombstones. We see them come back, leaving
a trail of decimal points like breadcrumbs. When you’re a ghost
that stops you in your tracks, and you pick one up like a penny
and then spend the rest of your life trying to decide if the point
goes to the left or the right of your number.
Old pine tree seems the only one
excited by the first warm wind
Empty-handed, the others barely nod
at his hundred foot tall child’s soul
Who remembers the world with no flowers
no leaves no bees who knows
What was and knows what’s coming
日從東溟轉, 夜向西海沉.
From the east the day comes spinning, revolving towards
the strange west, where descending evening colors the ocean’s every drop.
羣物各已息, 衆星燦然森.
Every living thing is resting, or holding its breath, it’s hard to tell
on nights when the toad swallows the moon –
蝦蟇將食月, 魑魅爭出陰.
Starlight glinting from every pine needle – or is it a million swords
unsheathed, our demons striving to materialize out of the dark cluster?
阮籍獨不寐, 徘徊起彈琴.
Only you, my friend, sleepless, pacing in your room, can sense it; only you
with a word, or a wave across your zither, can turn the knife’s edge back into night.
*
[Note: This is the most recent draft of a work based on a poem of Mei Yao-ch’en (1002-1060), about whom I have written many poems on this blog. The first version can be found here. The three between that draft and this one were too incomplete to share, so I’m sparing you those.
My continuing thanks to Chen Zhang, Chinese Literary Preceptor at Harvard University, for her explication and patience. She not only provided a word-for-word translation but important historical and critical perspective that helped me locate this work closer to the heart of Mei’s writing; she also provided her own enthusiasm for this specific poem. Sitting alone with a cup of coffee a few days ago in a Panera Bread with a marvelous view of the twilight saturating the Blue Ridge, I found a way into this poem through the voice of the poet I have appropriated/channeled/imitated in nearly forty other poems that were not attempting to be translations. That voice I was so used to writing in already helped me re-imagine this most recent version, which I think may be closer to a true translation of my friend Sheng-yu’s work. Again, the idea to approach the poem that way came from Chen, who pinpointed so well the difference between interpretation and translation in my many amateur’s questions.
Ruan Ji (210 – 263) was a poet Mei admired. He was also, some might say, an accomplished ne’er-do-well born into a prominent family who was unafraid of leveraging that prominence and wealth to support his chosen vocation as a poet. Some stories about him include him staying drunk for over a month to avoid having to get married, and so impressing an elder in his family with his zither playing one evening that his reputation was upgraded to ne’er-do-well-who-plays-a-mean-zither,-and-that-has-gotta-mean-something. ]
Somewhere between the tired moon’s glow and my unfocused eyes
I keep seeing winter—snow heaps when it’s just a white van
Across the street; accumulation on the metal roof next door
instead of the bored shine of a lazy evening rain. Tomorrow
It’s spring, I know, and the rain outside should sound less
like ice and more like the first words of flowers and grass.
Wife! every night you cradle your guitar for an hour and put the spirits
in harmony. Come over here and pick me up! And put me back in tune.
Just a short note that I’ll be participating in a National Poetry month event again this year, this time at the Massanutten Regional Library, Main branch in Harrisonburg. The reading is at 1pm and will feature four poets, including Angela Carter, Sara Robinson and Rebecca Lilly.
If you happen to be in the Shenandoah Valley in a few weeks, come by! Len, I’ll buy you some coffee (or wine) if you can make it from Turkey. Esther, come on now! The other side of the world is not that far away from Harrisonburg, as the moon flies. C, the weather in Seattle is horrible–you’d come on over to the East coast for day, even to hang out with a Patriots fan, right?
I know there are a bunch of you in my clan much closer. If you’ve got nothing better to do on the first Monday afternoon in April, maybe I will see you there? More info on the Massanutten Regional Library can be found and its other events can be found here.
As with my last reading at Bridgewater College, I will entertain any suggestions for what to read. I will have about ten minutes to read, so will probably read five poems or so. Thoughts?
This lamb has very strong opinions on what I should read but for some reason is remaining mum.
I got close enough to the image
to see the street lamp and tree
And graveyard beyond it
So much easier these days to appear middle-aged!
Moon’s out walking too – only its topmost perimeter,
frosted white, is visible in this nearly spring blue noon sky.
Maybe that’s how I’m seen today
as I pass through quiet intersections:
almost invisible but for the borders of my graying temples.
Tonight, with nothing to say, with all the absent things
crowding around me like a teapot with a parade
of friendly continental guards and crows encircles
tea from China, with all present concerns poured
into an empty cup and spilled for good luck
before drinking, with a mild wind from the south
whispering threats in another language to the last
of the hard-packed plowed snow on the streets,
I remind myself of nothing, and the long envelopment,
and the cup filling with jasmine and spring, and earth.
Icicle depending from the gutter and clarity of tree shadow on a snowy roof
Sky the blue of belief though nothing to hold on to
Like us the icicle hanging on lengthened by what’s leaving its way
Beneath it five drops of water like a memory are frozen in time
No telling what is still and what is moving
In your memory like a memory that drop will never change
In an image all about movement nothing will move
The icicle’s shape never seen before never again when I turn again
It has dropped from the gutter like it was never there the blue sky showing no surprise
The shadow of the maple’s high branches on the snowy roof
Translations from the English 