The Glass Constellation - Arthur Sze

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      In sepia, I draw a face and hands,

      a river, a hawk. When I read your letter,

      and feel the silences, the slow

      changes in perspective, in feeling,

      I make a fresco—fading even as it’s painted.

      It’s pentimento: knowing the original

      sepia lines, and the changes:

      the left hand in darkness, a face, effaced,

      in fading light, and the right hand

      pointing to a Giotto-blue river, a blue hawk,

      in a moment of grace.

      The Weather Shifts

      Unemployed, I recollect setting a plumb

      line for the doorjambs to a house,

      recollect nailing a rebar through two corbels

      locked in a 60° angle into a post; and

      smell unpicked cherries, fragrant,

      in the dark rich earth. It is a pellucid

      night in January: and the mind has its

      own shifts in weather: a feel for light

      from a star, or for a woman’s voice,

      a recognition of the world’s greed,

      of a death march on the Philippines, or

      of being shot by an arrow dipped in curare.

      Drinking tequila, I watch the moon

      rise slowly over the black hills; a bird

      sings, somewhere, out in the junipers.

      *

      Juniper Fires

      Juniper

      fires burn in the crisp night.

      I am inebriated

      on juniper smoke. And as my mind clears,

      I see a white crane standing, one-legged, in the snow.

      And see clearly the

      rocks, and shaggy pines, the winter moon, and

      creek.

      Frost

      Notice each windowpane has a different

      swirling pattern of frost etched on the glass.

      And notice how slowly the sun melts

      the glaze. It is indelible: a fossil of a fern,

      or a coelacanth, or a derelict who

      rummages in his pockets and pulls out a few

      apple cores. Notice the peculiar

      angle of light in the slow shift of sunrise.

      Where is the whir of the helicopter?

      The search for escaped convicts in the city?

      Be amazed at the shine and the wet.

      Simply to live is a joy.

      Black Lightning

      A blind girl

      stares at me,

      then types out ten lines

      in braille.

      The air has a scent

      of sandalwood and

      arsenic; a night-blooming cereus

      blooms on a dark path.

      I look at the

      short and long flow

      of the lines:

      and guess at garlic,

      the sun, a silver desert rain,

      and palms.

      Or is it simply

      about hands, a river of light,

      the ear of a snail,

      or rags?

      And, stunned, I feel

      the nerves of my hand flashing

      in the dark, feel

      the world as black

      lightning.

      Piranhas

      piranhas

      in a wine-dark river.

      a radio station on antarctica sends messages

      to outer space,

      listens to quasars pulsing in the spiral nebula of andromeda.

      a banker goes for a drive

      in a red mercedes,

      smokes black russian sobranie from england.

      the sun

      rides a red appaloosa to the gold mountains in the west;

      then, incognito, shows up in questa:

      wearing shades, carrying a geiger counter, and

      prospecting for plutonium.

      the history of the world

      is in a museum in albania;

      the price of admission is one dollar.

      a kgb agent

      has located trotsky’s corpse,

      and, under the guise of a gardener, enters his house

      and breaks open his casket, and

      shatters his cranium with an ice pick.

      lepers

      in a cathedral are staring up at the rose window.

      o window of light:

      we are falling

      into a bottomless lake full of piranhas—

      the piranhas, luminous, opalescent,

      in the black water.

      o paris, venice, moscow, buenos aires, saigon, kuala lumpur:

      we are sailing up the wine-dark

      river.

      Impressions of the New Mexico Legislature

      The lieutenant governor sits in the center

      behind an oak desk. Below him, the reader of bills

      reads at thirty miles per hour to pass or defeat

      a bill depending on his cue.

      One senator

      talks on the phone to Miss Española; another, a thug,

      opens his briefcase, takes out a bottle

      of whiskey, a shot glass, and begins drinking.

      Bills from various committees are meanwhile passed

      without comment. Finally, a bill

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