SOUNDING STONES

Sounding stones,

an instrument I favor.

These a set

from Spring and Autumn period,

made in the city Ying,

so the family name is Chu.

On their grey-green skin,

ghosts of painted phoenix.

Near Huayuankou,

they dwell in a museum.

We’d come to view the tripod cauldron,

the calyx and tripod goblet,

not knowing

the sounding stones were there.

Then I saw them,

short and long,

their gently curved, bowing forms

pendant as hung sculpture,

one cord

strung through angled tops.

As for the tri-colored camel,

the bronze mirror of flowers and birds,

the wine vessel carved with dragons,

the white porcelain,

I ignored them all.

Under the same roof,

a stone lion, stone rhino,

infantry, generals of the Qin Emperor,

and from the Zhao Mausoleum

fine majestic horses

sleeping deep

amid clay pots, huge boulders,

never to awaken.

A horde of fashioned lives,

mouths

that cannot speak,

legs

powerless to run.

But these sounding stones—

listen:

you may conceive

a spare court dance

improvised from the moment,

this chime of earth’s and heaven’s breath

singing its own

clear south concordia,

distant, ancient, tunneling

all the way from the Warring States,

young and immutable.

How strange,

mere stones.