The Glass Constellation - Arthur Sze

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sparks.

      Steer north, then, to Taos, where

      the river, running deeper, cuts a gorge,

      and at midnight the moon

      waxes; minnows scatter

      at your step,

      the boat is moored to sky.

      Three a.m., in Winter

      When I went to Zuni,

      my mind was a singing arrow; the black desert

      was shining, and I flew,

      a green peyote bird, in the wind’s eye …

      It’s three a.m., and

      the road to Zuni is buried in snow.

      Thinking of you, I taste green wine,

      I touch sparks, I fly.

      Lament

      Let me pick

      olives in the moonlight.

      Let me ride

      a pale green horse.

      Let me taste the autumn fires.

      Or else,

      let me die in a war.

      No Hieroglyphics

      No hieroglyphics but the bird singing in the throat of the tree.

      When I walk home, my hair bristling, hear you read

      by the hearth in slow fire. No calendars

      to twist days into years or

      months back to seconds.

      We live in fear.

      But open our

      lives to the sea.

      Walk on water with the

      moon. Stars, stars! No one to

      teach. That the long day slips into night.

      As the mind withers in the tree. But only to sail

      a boat without wind. Down the endless river. The sand running out.

      Wang Wei

      At my window

      the rain raves, raves about dying,

      and does not

      hear in the bamboo

      a zither, which, plucked,

      inebriates the birds

      and brings closer to the heart

      the moon.

      Morning Shutters

      We extend arms

      infinitely long

      into the sunrise.

      Then the shutters close,

      and we begin

      the slow, painful

      step of learning

      shadows in the dark.

      My hand goes to your thigh.

      The hills

      high above us

      shine in the heat.

      Now, the whites of your eyes

      are filled

      with the lost years.

      Lupine

      I planted lupine and nasturtiums

      in the dark April dirt. Who heard the passing

      cars or trucks? I was held

      by your face, eclipsed, in partial light.

      I sip hibiscus tea, and am at peace

      in the purple dusk.

      “Kwan, kwan,” cries a bird, distant,

      in the pines.

      Do Not Speak Keresan to a Mescalero Apache

      Do not speak

      Keresan to a Mescalero Apache,

      but cultivate

      private languages;

      a cottonwood

      as it disintegrates into gold,

      or a house

      nailed into the earth:

      the dirt road

      into that reservation

      is unmarked.

       Dazzled

      1982

      Viewing Photographs of China

      Viewing photographs of China,

      we visit a pearl farm, factories, and

      watch a woman stare at us ten

      minutes after a surgical operation

      with acupuncture.

      The mind

      is a golden eagle. An arctic tern

      is flying in the desert: and

      the desert incarnadined, the sun

      incarnadined.

      The photograph

      of a poster of Chang Ch’ing is

      two removes from reality. Lin Piao,

      Liu Shao-chi, and Chang Ch’ing

      are either dead or disgraced.

      The poster shows her in a loose

      dress drinking a martini; the

      issues of the Cultural Revolution

      are confounded.

      And, in perusing

      the photographs in the mind’s eye,

      we discern bamboo, factories,

      pearls; and consider African wars,

      the Russian Revolution, the

      Tierra Amarilla Courthouse Raid.

      And instead of insisting that

      the world have an essence, we

      juxtapose, as in a collage,

      facts, ideas, images:

      the arctic

      tern, the pearl farm, considerations

      of the two World Wars, Peruvian

      horses, executions, concentration

      camps; and find, as in a sapphire,

      a clear light, a clear emerging

      view

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