Tian-Ai

 

 

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栩栩然蝴蝶也, 自喻适志与，不知周也。

The consequence is now.

Buildings caterpillar to the sky flushed together,
the thickest fog demanding nothing fed by exhalations
demanding everything.

On high balconies grow lamps feed
lychee trees, staining the fog
razor purple;

looming tired tangles of concrete,
scaffold and wire hanging from air conditioner boxes
doing nothing for the condensated windows,

everything only a grey suggestion.
No cars on the streets, not today. Only the hum of the boxes
whirring fans coiling the fog disturbing

telephone wire
spider legs
above the street.

Neon signs float rectangular to a vanishing
point, fog hands over their mouths
muffling their beckoning to:

俄然觉，则戚戚然周也。

Mercy came once in an unearthed erhu,
Cradled from a waterlogged basement like an infant.
We did not know it was an erhu then but we wanted to so badly
That we knew it without name.

Tatters of snakeskin framed its wood hexagon
A cane clacked to the floor
The elder scrambled up the eucalyptus
Descending with a python
Slit down the middle with his pinky nail.

Eight sons to stretch its skin across the box
Eight more to seal it,
The old man flicked his fingernail
二
Two notes that drummed the river
Ricocheted across the city a million
Pulses synced to silence
Shrine to a new and fleeting God.

Once a boy stole it
Strung it with bra wire and bowed:
胡
A soft wail traced spines top to bottom
Vibrato smoothed down vertebra with its single finger
Shivering the trees retracting their plums and the mothers
Pulled for them finally finally—

A week later cityfolk found an instrument
Snapped in half
Swallowed whole by a boa;

A week later they found the boy
Shot dead in the evening,
Rosy under the traffic light.

 

 

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不知周之梦为蝴蝶与，

No one admits we’ve started praying again
so the procession is quiet. The fog has thickened, but lanterns border the
streets,
orbed hearts guiding the parade: the people in black

 robes, bodiless if not for the drifting
ceramic masks of tigers monkeys dragons cranes women,
drumming out their prayer:        summon     summon

Men: frustrated, drool seawater as they sing
Women: humming mouths sticky with
lychee eyes,

stomachs full
of unripe
things.

Above the street
I watch wet-mouthed
at the window.

Grandfather smokes the long pipe on the couch,
its long crescent channels drags in quarter notes,
smoke wafts S’s out the window
joining the fog–

One time this was a snake
He says.

I lied. I don’t see him. He died years ago.
I don’t see him so violently
I see him.

 

 

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蝴蝶之梦为周与？

The drums persist:
communion communion
Little girls’ heads above
dart in and out of windows, salivating for red.

My brother, mask of a crimson ox
drumming away something
dad put inside him.

He doesn’t tell me much about it, only that
in the night
dad stood over the bed

while he slept.
It slipped from the mouth
and buried into his.

I asked him what it tasted like.
He said a dog’s tongue,
loving too hard.