from NINE ZITHER VARIATIONS

Ford shallow streams, stones bruise my feet.

Cross deep water, dragons share my skiff.

—Han Yu (Qin Melody: The Return)

3

Clouds flow by, catching light

while here in this building

abandoned since the war

a spider climbs high

on its weavings, fine strands

webbed like waterways

in a canal town, as if threading

a secret music we might hear.

Dusk’s own tones, these fruit tree blooms,

swell their false flourishings,

sunset a shimmer of unfeeling gods

who come and go.

4

By wind and rain once more

awakened, I sink in a shattering dawn

to dreamless depths, unsettled water

rising and falling, lotuses floating shoreward

like frail totems of the past, old letters

complaining, accusing, lost filaments

to whatever mind still lives.

Fading stars must soon

be swallowed by the sea,

the world’s wilderness lit

for wounded fish,

wing-shut birds, beasts whose hooves

have finally come to rest

amid so many twists, so many turns.

5

Have you ever sought

on sleepless nights

the faintest rustlings of the stars?

Before we came, the insects hatched,

the fish, a tale that tells how we shall age

like dinosaurs who also walked

and flew trumpeting toward their own absence.

We too might choose to reflect,

striding a ruined landscape

like a downcast soldier

beyond tumbled city walls

spots spring blossoms

opening on the road ahead,

feels the arrival of warm rains

to quench the ancient battlefield.

7

No surprise you’d pluck a bloodless flower,

your face aglow at evening

as if to speak—that look of amazement

at the ascent of fireflies—

one’s heart must grow heavy

with autumn leaves adrift

through an impenetrable fog,

somewhere a torrent

sweeping off these shadows.