Seminar on Ancient Books

In the dim light

every face is wax

though the sun outside shines brilliant.

The old professor’s hair is silver,

his young assistant’s richly black.

On the bald head of the lecturer

the rows of lights reflect

like candles. Scholars discuss

these Han tombs’ bamboo books.

Tight-shut door, stale air, easy to imagine

the burial chamber three

chi

down,

stacks of bamboo strips, only darkness

reading pre-Qin wisdom, their words

odd snicks on bamboo.

The moment the tomb sealed, time sank

into night and deep slumber,

the oxygen, nitrogen gone foul

in the corpses’ nostrils and lungs.

Two thousand years’ silence

till the graverobber’s spade

cracks a dazzle of sunlight,

dead air and darkness hissing out.

We sit in the room, steady as ancient bells,

our faces still wax. For thirty years

the texts unpublished,

some hoarded by the living,

some vanished with the dead.

Will the assistant’s sable hair

silver in the decades

or go bald? How soon,

like tomb lamps,

his once-bright eyes will dim.

Bamboo strips and fine silk

moulder into dust for wind.

The sun’s already slipped behind the hills.

In the dusky sky, swallows weave,

inscribing unreadable characters.