ECHOING WALL

Put your ear against the wall.

Can you catch

the words of the muted?

Bands of fired clay cut them off.

What is there to hear? The other end

extends by happenstance

to the Temple of Good Harvest,

filled with gold light, its great umbrella roofs mantling

a deep blue dazzle of tiles.

In its shade, petitions are received

before the landscape screen,

calm pine and cypress, still waters, mountains.

Soft voices hug the north wall

rounding the Imperial Vault of Heaven,

curving toward your ear.

Year after year, the emperor

gives thanks for the five crop harvest,

his palmclaps circling

above the Three Echo Stone.

How fine their sound runs along the wall,

ringing, recentering.

Round sky, square earth, within this wall its core.

A grand wood mansion, stout sided,

but only if the wall grows higher,

the gaps stay patched.

Beyond, earth trembles, clay cracks,

dust clouds roil from afar.

Foundations shake, petitions

whirl in a storm, all of them

received under the umbrella,

its rows of blue glazed tiles,

the rich hush of gilded panels.

Put your ear against the wall. Closer.

To that quivering epicenter

just beneath your feet.