ASTRAY

for Princess Yuzhen

When today meets yesterday,

sing of those who traveled

                        —Li Bai

You arrive on autumn winds,

those white horses racing the moon

down curved roads, zithery tree limbs,

cloud scud

If dew still clings to grassblades

and stars hang deathless in the sky

you come in a leaftorn whirl

of your pulse and the night’s own

tumbling

When did I leave? When did you appear?

Am I the night rain you awaited

for a thousand years,

the flame you could not forget?

Those hoofbeats summon me

to pluck herbs for you from the path beyond the clouds,

roll pills of immortality beside a rainbow,

to become for you a cicada hidden underground since autumn,

a swallow mud-daubing its spring nest

But I am too late

the mountain gate closed

the red water fogged to green hallucinations

If the moon sways a mountainful of loose hair

for whom does the wind at the door knock?

Can two luan birds perch on one branch?

There’s no starry sky beyond this one,

no bamboo mat opened under tall pines

Mysteries and legends coil upward

from the mountain house where you lived

When did you arrive? When did I leave?

The sweet years of our lives, their yearning,

roll like stones from a cliffside

toward a bottomless valley

Tonight, I remember a thousand-year-old Jingting Mountain

as if its fog were only yesterday