Everytime a Knot Is Undone, a God Is Released
Page 9
For our Han interpreter speaks no Mongolian,
And our Mongolian guide speaks no Han,
And I speak neither.
So we continue
To communicate with nods and smiles,
Linked like worry beads,
With body language as if
Touch could tell,
Squeezed between Han and Mongol,
Our blue-quilted pajamas like
Stuffed cotton bales:
A no-man’s-land of language
Between the frontiers of uncompromising cultures.
I gaze at a portrait of Mao
Absently, like a swaying passenger
Reading advertisements in the subway,
A transistor radio,
An alarm clock made in Hong Kong,
A packet of Chinese cigarettes,
A newspaper, a box of Shanghai matches,
A plastic vase with artificial flowers,
A Mongol matron,
Sitting to the left of me,
Cuts mutton for her guests.
These strange and clumsy Hans
With these barbarians from the West!
What can you think of me,
Mongol matron
With your small and delicate wrists gold-ringed,
The sleeves of your quilted robe
Flung back absently,
Whose men speak in epic poetry
Like Native Americans?
Your race’s name alone
Is still enough to strike terror in white hearts,
But not mine.
What a saving grace
To strike terror in the bloated and cholesteroled heart
Of Western Europe!
Serene in the absoluteness of change,
I can tell by the set of that mouth,
The grace of those tattooed hands,
The line of that restless back,
You will never
Sleep in a stone house.
You’ll never rest your head
Beneath brick and concrete
Nor let your men,
Who speak in epic poetry
Like Native Americans,
Do so while you have breath
To exhale this purest light
That some call isolation:
I try telepathy to reach through
Our blue quilts,
Stare into your fine-boned face,
Purified by space,
Transfixed by solitude,
Primed on desolation,
Glowing in the evening of the
End of the world
Like a penny,
Almond eyes as deep and blank
As a night out there under the stars,
A mouth used to saying nothing,
A skin as wind-polished as
Mountain rock,
As golden as winter grass,
Raising your eyes from time to time
To greet your husband,
Raising your eyes with just the vaguest
Appeal for approval
From a round-faced shepherd
In brown, floor-length quilt and
Fine soft crimson leather boots,
Who smiles widely
While outside sheep sprinkle themselves
Like salt on the pepper colored steppes.
The Well of the Precious Concubine Pearl
Can it be that the world is not flat?
As level as stagnant water in brass urns
Spaced on marble terraces as steady as sin?
Roof tiles threaded in golden sea shells,
Curved like a queen’s haunch,
Marble terraces mounting like fate
As horizon-less as the ocean,
So deadly smooth as to seem
Anchored to the center of the world,
Loneliness riveted like ice caps
Onto the eye of the world,
And the eye of the world is in
The Well of the Precious Concubine Pearl.
Dragons and Phoenix rising on
Marble terraces mounting like desire,
Hauled by ten thousand elephants,
Carved by ten thousand eunuchs,
Nameless ones whose bones are mortar for the
Four brick walls enclosing four brick walls,
Each square a ripple in a well
In the eye of the world,
And the eye of the world is in
The Well of the Precious Concubine Pearl.
Courtyards radiate outwards on a silken cord
Pulled back by delicate regulatory weights,
Tender balance of texture,
Whole justice of line,
Singular exhortation of perspective,
Exhaling across transparent vastness,
The opening and closing of gates like lungs,
The opening and closing of gates like lungs,
The opening and closing of love like gates,
The opening and closing of love like gates.
A million coolies’ shadows
Stir the depths of the Golden River Canal
Spanned by three marble bridges
Arched like the perfect brow of a child,
Pure of all contrivances yet cunning in absoluteness,
The true innocence of space,
The opening and closing of gates like lungs,
The opening and closing of gates like lungs,
The opening and closing of love like gates,
The opening and closing of love like gates.
The Gate of Culmination,
The Gate of Supreme Harmony,
The Gate of Eastern Blowing,
The opening and closing of love like gates,
The opening and closing of love like gates.
The Gate of Integrity in Order,
The Gate of Transcendent Accord,
The Gate of Serenity in Old Age,
Love rustles in gray silk in the palace,
Love rustles in gray silk in the palace.
Love rustles in gray silk in the palace,
Love rustles in gray silk in the palace.
The Palace of Dazzling Clarity,
The Palace of Purity in Affection,
The Palace of Delicious Things,
The Palace of Infinite Pleasure,
The Palace of Potent Fecundity,
The Palace Where One Gives Thanks for a Son,
The Palace of Perfect Peace,
The Palace of Literary Glory.
Love rustles like gray silk in the palace,
Love rustles like gray silk in the palace.
The Palace of Buddha,
The Palace of Tranquility and Quietude,
The Palace of Eternal Spring,
The Palace of Intellectual Refinement,
The Palace of Total Joy,
The Palace of Rare Sublimity,
The Palace of Ultimate Elegance,
The Palace of the Certitude of Happiness.
And in the pavilion
Black hair shifts.
Black hair shifts in the pavilion,
And white porcelain shatters
In the Pavilion of the Purest Perfumes,
In the Pavilion of Melodious Sounds.
Black hair shifts,
And white porcelain shatters
On a red lacquered table,
Spilling tea leaves
Onto the eye of the world,
And the eye of the world is in
The Well of the Precious Concubine Pearl.
Han Shroud
F.
Jade
God’s juices
Solidified
Shield against mortality I drape you drop by drop
Like grains of rice Running from
The silos of my favorite domain
I enfolding you as
I enfolded you in life
With my body still warm
From the hunt
Ardent heat
Now
&nbs
p; As cold as
These jade fragments
I weave
With golden threads
Round you
Beloved wife
Princess!
Jade
Power over life and death Solidified
Imperial seals of the Middle Kingdom
I’d forgotten
Emperors die too
We are side by side but
I am too weighted down with winding sheet
To take your hand
Too weighted with jade
To stir my heart
Jade closes my eyes and my nostrils
This suffocating green
That prevents me from seeing
My empress
Love
Take this mask from me
So that I may see your face
For the last time
Beloved friend
Princess!
M.
Jade
Love’s juices
Solidified
Sheathed in your own flesh
I drape you drop by drop
Like emerald perfume
Running from
My favorite silver and sapphire gourd
Enfolding you as
I enfolded you in life
With my body still warm
From the sun of my terrace
Ardent heat
Now
As cold as
These jade fragments
I weave
With golden threads
Round you
Beloved husband
Prince!
Jade
The green of June wheat
Solidified
As tender as my silks brushing your hand
I’d forgotten
Empresses die too
We are side by side but
I am too weighted down with winding sheet
To take your hand
Too weighted with jade
To stir my heart
Jade closes my eyes and my nostrils
This lily-leaf green
That prevents me from seeing
My emperor
Love
Take this mask from me
So that I may see your face
For the last time
Beloved friend
Prince!
V.
WHITE PORCELAIN
1975-2000
And Out of Love
And out of love,
Seated,
She birthed
What Arp considered
Perfection.
Between black thighs
It dropped,
Baked by womb fires,
Glazed with ambrosia,
Swollen on Goddess juice,
Egg-shaped,
In white porcelain,
It left her.
It floated on the surface of
Primordial nebula,
Neither sky nor sea,
Neither space nor void,
Neither matter nor
Anti-matter,
But a cosmic cloud
Illuminated by Hell’s
Original light,
Rinsed with dry ice and
Flowing like a river of agate,
Carried on the backs of
Albino elephants
Pawing primeval rain forest where
Peonies and pomegranates
Grow in groves,
And the ivory serpent
Divides herself in two
And two again
In never-ending copulation
Which we, in pale imitation,
Usurp,
Shadow boxing on
Love’s friezes
Like greedy, heartless,
Savage children,
Scrawling precocious graffiti
On the garden walls
Of Earthly Delights.
Heads Bent
Heads bent
As if over some
Mathematical equation,
Hands sliding and trembling
On drug-glazed skin
Smoother than baked white porcelain
Cracked and fissured with
Uninvented lies,
Burnt on flesh as on parchment,
Scrupulously engraved
In delicate, gold-embossed tones
By meticulous, chaste, well-trained hands,
Eyes gone blind from beauty,
A labor of love,
A work of years,
The Book of Hours,
Raging beyond form and color
Or rather
Inside form and made of color
Itself,
As if the measure of Time
Hadn’t been invented by the Egyptians,
Did not float
Through immortal airless tombs,
Love,
Written on the ceiling, made to believe
The cool taste of blue-green
Hovering between lips,
Sighing on neon moonlight,
A gleam of rose behind eyelids
Weighted by jade:
That green again
Interrupted by a wavy finger
Rumpling it and whipping up
Yellow smog that hides
Like a muslin mask.
The one face I need to see
In this first light of a new day:
Your face
As we slip past each other into
Our respective
Solitudes.
In Darkness I Lie
In darkness I lie
And hold your wrist
And take your pulse,
A slow and passionate lapping
At my side,
Steady as wave-breaking
On a stolen stone beach,
The pulse of a soldier
Stalking land mines.
The wary wait
For the flesh’s flash,
That exploding
White porcelain shell
Illuminating the night like
The back of Ahab’s white whale
Breaking the waters
Of this rare calm.
In danger, I lie
And kiss this sweet throbbing
And hold it to my lips.
The vain underground
Of your body sweeps by me,
My breath,
X-raying the convoluting
Freeways of secret arteries,
Trafficking endlessly between
Existence and nonexistence,
Veiled and taut skin hovering between
Man and Beast,
Consciousness and non-consciousness,
While I explore
That vast inner space
As wild and inexplicable as
Those billion other stars,
My lips placed like
One footprint on a moon
Trapped by a gravitational force
As irresistible as
What is described as
Love,
Which makes me think
I must change my life
Sing To Me
Sing to me.
Sing to me a sad song
And let my tears,
As transparent as
White porcelain,
As pure as
Uncontaminated moon,
Venus-shaped and softly fluted,
The lips curled back
By dragon’s teeth,
Bathe you.
Bathe, I say in
My trillion
White porcelain tears,
Light-rounded and
Back-lit by
Fistfuls of diamonds,
Falling one by one like
One million blows,
If I were to count them,
On ribs creaking under
A weight,
So unwarranted,
My heart
Has long since lost
Its sens
es,
Speaking to the left
And to the right,
No longer knowing what is real
And what is unreal
And no longer caring
Either;
No longer knowing
What is true
And what is untrue
And no longer caring
Either;
Remembering only
What came before:
That great feast
Which was withdrawn
While I sang.
Body Poised
Body poised
Like an incandescent arrow
In the nacreous light,
Pointing away,
Leaving me,
Leaving me,
Shaking your head
In childish refusal to accept
Compromise,
Condescending,
Your last kisses that
Scorch my hair and singe my lashes
Already wet,
I smell it (even now):
A hot iron on damp cloth,
Kisses that bake my eyes into
White porcelain
As dead as Nefertiti’s stare
At dusty walls
In Cairo.
For moments I don’t breathe
Thinking if I never move
You may stay,
So I leave myself without breath,
Without that reflex bellowing of the lungs,
And you stay
But abstractly
As if you had
Other things on you mind.
You lie down beside me
On a bright blade of morning,
Quivering like a bow abruptly released,
Leaving me,
Leaving me,
But why?
Will you rest easier
When you pass no more this way?
When you pass by Tel-el-Amarna?
Loneliness,
Your name a thousand years,
Still stands for
Everything.
Let Me Lie Down In Red
Let me lie down in red
And let the beasts fly over me,
Glowing in the wee hours
Like a blind eye.
A white porcelain baptismal cradles
The red Chinese seal
I engrave there alone,
Hung over and mesmerized by
A dazzling display of
Calligraphy,
Slipping and sliding,
Prodigious configurations
Of Beauty bloodied
Red on white,
My wrists held before me
Like a handcuffed prisoner,
A dangerous criminal
With murder in his heart
But not another’s—
Bracelets not of steel,
But steel could not hold them
As fast and steady as this—
That I shake not
In this ridiculous mirrored palace
Of conspicuous consumption
Where I see myself,
A hysterical fool,
An aging child,
A desperate delinquent,
A cuckolded believer,
Doing imagined violence
To myself
Into infinity,
Transmigrated a thousand times