COURTYARD

Raindrops linger on the eaves

recalling in late autumn old people, old stories.

These acorns all over the yard

knocked at the doors of many generations.

Each gust of wind plunders the wardrobe

painted with ox blood,

headdresses of rat’s teeth, the unerasable

fragrance of age.

Old houses store scales, not bells, yet hide

how many myths, only to restore house-tiles

to the body, family names more important than given names.

Many musical instruments

in the dust, unplayed forever, five saws

slid into drawers, ten golden bowls that bump the forehead with a note

forever echoing a bell-toll.

Four young girls around a willow,

apricot flowers on their heads,

plaiting each other’s braids;

the gods of those days

moved off with the fish urn.

Pointing to the stone horse

the many-flowered branch, too many

to count, only mother’s shadow

cast at the same moment

moonlight flooded the bed.

When dreaming was like reading a newspaper,

when the autumn pears touched according to the old calendar,

and someone stopped to string them into words.

Stone coffins, wooden carts, ancient paths, city walls;

beyond a range of roofpeaks, the courtyards’

logic crisscrossing streets and lanes

whose palmlines prophesied a square.

A cold draft as if a coat were misbuttoned,

coins from the hand scattered on the table,

stacked like the old city’s tumblestone steps

so while gathering them in,

joy after joy escapes.

Set the old man gently on your knees,

facing where ancestors faced each morning to wash,

where from the alley lifts the cry of the knifegrinder.

The more you long to see, the higher the wall rises.