After Dinner

After dinner, you pour tea in your small rice bowl,

tea leaves swirling among the specks,

like the stream of a marriage midcourse,

too sure to crest its sand-layered banks,

too slow to loosen its deep-rooted reeds.

We’ve been here, been there, our eyes

seeing what’s to see, what’s not

before night’s curtain.

After dinner, serenity

till silence speaks, till sleep.

Let this tungsten, its filament white as sunlight,

warm the damp, cool shades of night.

Let the embers of the past reveal tomorrow’s skies.

Talk of the past as if chosen.

Talk of the future as if past.

After dinner, light the lamp.

The weary day reclines beyond its food, its drink.

Those who eat stay full till midnight.