The Glass Constellation - Arthur Sze

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like a Serbian

      in a twenty-four-hour truck stop,

      is a yellow sandhill crane lost in Albuquerque.

      I see the red blooms of a nasturtium battered

      in a hailstorm. I see the bleached white bones of a horse

      at the bottom of a canyon. And I see his hands,

      empty hands, and words, empty words.

      Tsankawi

      The men hiked on a loop trail

      past the humpbacked flute player and

      a creation spiral petroglyph,

      then up a ladder to the top of the mesa

      and met the women there.

      A flock of wild geese wheeled

      in shifting formation over the mesa,

      then flew south climbing higher and higher

      and disappearing in clear sunlight.

      The ceremony was simple: a blessing

      of rings by “water which knows no

      boundaries,” and then a sprinkling of baskets

      with blue cornmeal.

      I write of this a week later

      and think of Marie, who, at San Ildefonso,

      opened the door to her house to us.

      And we were deeply moved.

      I hear these lines from the wedding:

      “In our country, wind blows, willows live,

      you live, I live, we live.”

      Antares

      You point to

      Antares.

      The wind rustles the cottonwood leaves.

      And the intermittent

      rain sounds like a fifty-

      string zither. A red lotus blossoms

      in the air. And, touching you,

      I am like light from

      Antares. It has taken me light-

      years to arrive.

      The Owl

      The path was purple in the dusk.

      I saw an owl, perched,

      on a branch.

      And when the owl stirred, a fine dust

      fell from its wings. I was

      silent then. And felt

      the owl quaver. And at dawn, waking,

      the path was green in the

      May light.

      The Cornucopia

      Grapes grow up a difficult and

      sloped terrain. A soft line of poplars

      shimmers in the disappearing light.

      At midnight, the poor move

      into the train stations of Italy,

      spread out blankets for the children,

      and pretend to the police they have tickets

      and are waiting for a train.

      The statue of Bacchus is a contrast

      with his right hand holding a shallow but

      wine-brimming cup. His left hand

      reaches easily into the cornucopia

      where grapes ripen and burst open.

      It is a vivid dream: to wake

      from the statue’s grace and life force

      to the suffering in the streets.

      But the truth is the cornucopia

      is open to all who are alive,

      who look and feel the world in

      its pristine beauty—as a dragonfly

      hovering in the sunlight over clear

      water; and who feel the world

      as a luminous world—as green plankton

      drifting at night in the sea.

      The Chance

      The blue-black mountains are etched

      with ice. I drive south in fading light.

      The lights of my car set out before

      me, and disappear before my very eyes.

      And as I approach thirty, the distances

      are shorter than I guess? The mind

      travels at the speed of light. But for

      how many people are the passions

      ironwood, ironwood that hardens and hardens?

      Take the ex-musician, insurance salesman,

      who sells himself a policy on his own life;

      or the magician who has himself locked

      in a chest and thrown into the sea,

      only to discover he is caught in his own chains.

      I want a passion that grows and grows.

      To feel, think, act, and be defined

      by your actions, thoughts, feelings.

      As in the bones of a hand in an X-ray,

      I want the clear white light to work

      against the fuzzy blurred edges of the darkness:

      even if the darkness precedes and follows

      us, we have a chance, briefly, to shine.

      The Network

      In 1861, George Hew sailed in a rowboat

      from the Pearl River, China, across

      the Pacific Ocean to San Francisco.

      He sailed alone. The photograph of him

      in a museum disappeared. But, in the mind,

      he is intense, vivid, alive. What is

      this fact but another fact in a world

      of facts, another truth in a vast network

      of truths? It is a red maple leaf

      flaming out at the end of its life,

      revealing an incredibly rich and complex

      network of branching veins. We live

      in such a network: the world is opaque,

      translucent, or, suddenly, lucid,

      vibrant. The air is alive and hums

      then. Speech is too slow to the mind.

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