My poem “Endurance, 1946” is live at Issue 2 of Fahmidan Journal. Thank you editors Ranna Kisswani and Anthony R. Salandy for taking this piece.
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Tag Archives: elegy
As Blue Fades
As Blue Fades
Which defines you best, a creaking lid or the light-turned flower?
The coffee’s steam or smoke wafting from your hand.
Your bowls color my shelves; I touch them daily.
Sound fills their bodies with memory.
The lighter’s click invokes your name.
And the stepping stones to nowhere, your current address.
If the moon could breathe would its breath flavor our nights?
I picture a separate one above your clouded island.
The dissipating blue in filtered light.
Above the coral. Above the waves and ocean floor far below.
Above the space your ashes should share.
Where the boats rise and fall, like chests, like the waning years.
Like a tide carrying me towards yesterday’s reef.
Or the black-tailed gull spinning in the updraft.
“As Blue Fades” first appeared in Underfoot in October 2017.
Elegy
Elegy
1. Adrift
I count more graves than people in my sleep,
but nothing turns more quickly
than an empty wind
in a place whose memory has died.
And all manner of departure: What you have left is you
without you. As if it could be different, as if decades
could withdraw and draft a blueprint of motive and action,
returning them, returning you, to that point
across the sea where the ship has not yet arrived.
If you ask she will say it does not matter. If you ask.
2. Parentheses
To be within, yet without, as in the unuttered phrase.
It is time the stone made an effort to flower,
to render the void clear and resolute, the diction of
separation divided by decades and your ocean.
The language of silence, drawn near.
3. From the Other Side
Sometime becomes never and steps around a desolate corner,
and all we have left is our field
awash in stone, remnants of the unspoken.
I have no memory of you. Nor you, of me,
but the strands do not lie, and unraveled,
expose the imperfect blends
that compose my love. A leaky roof. The last word.
A pity to put up at all
but there is rain.
4. Another Night
Of all the hours which were the longest?
The earth trembled around me
and I lay still, bearing witness to
the uncertain malice of its
shrug, shoulders brought to
fore, then returned,
and finally, released. If,
after this half-century, words
could reform in your mouth,
what denial would issue?
Ashes, washing ashore.
5. Bridge
And seeing you only as the shadow of an
ending whose voice lies
in an uncommon past, how
may we recognize the very shape we share?
The bridge’s fate is loneliness,
knowing that one side
decries the other’s
call, that separation affords new light:
they are between
comfort and space, between words and a smile,
between nothingness and sorrow,
two points, beginning and end,
reaching, in opposition, towards each other.
Notes:
“What you have left is you without you” is from Edmond Jabes’s “At the Threshold of the Book” in The Book of Questions: Volume I, translated by Rosemary Waldrop.
“It is time the stone made an effort to flower” is from Paul Celan’s poem “Corona,” included in Poems of Paul Celan translated by Michael Hamburger.
“A pity to put up at all but there is rain” is from Basho’s Back Roads to Far Towns, translated by Cid Corman and Kamake Susumu.
Albert Huffstickler’s poem “Bridges” which appeared in The Balcones Review in 1987, begins “They are between…”
“Elegy” first appeared on Underfoot Poetry in October 2017.
Meditation in White
Meditation in White (Lilies)
Clouds pass my high window quickly, abandoning the blue.
Indefinite mass, indeterminate, impersonal
as only intimates may know.
Though you lay there, nothing remained in the bed.
Which is the blank page’s gift, the monotone
or a suggestion of mist and stripped bones.
The nurse marked the passage with pen on paper.
Renewal, departure. A rising.
I accept the ash of suffering
as I accept our destination, the morning
and its offerings, with you in synthesis,
complete and empty, shaded in contrast,
wilting, as another opens. Laughter eases the way.
***
This was first published in Shadowtrain, and made its first appearance here in March 2016.
Ashes
Ashes
To sweeten the dish, add salt. To bear the pain,
render the insoluble. She envied
the past its incursions, yet the past yields to all,
avoidance to acceptance, trees to smoke.
My mother brought to this country a token of her death to come.
Now it sits on my shelf bearing implements of music.
In her last days I played Sakura on the mandolin,
trusting that she might find comfort
in the blossoms fluttering through the failing notes,
a return to mornings
of tea and rice, of
warmth and paper walls and deep laughter.
Today the rain spells forgive
and every idea becomes form, every shadow a symptom,
each gesture a word, a naming in silence.
Scatter me in air I’ve never breathed.
* * *
“Ashes,” first appeared in Extract(s) in 2013, was reprinted on The Reverie Poetry Journal, and is included in my chapbook, If Your Matter Could Reform.
Ghost, with a Line from Porchia
Ghost, with a Line from Porchia
In my dreams you manifest in a younger form.
If I were to give you life, what could I give you?
Your hands never touched these walls, yet you inhabit them.
As my language inters you, I am absorbed in yours.
Some gifts are simply not proffered, others are released.
My fingers retrace your name in both sun and shade.
The rain taps out regrets, regrets on the metal roof.
Dim spirit, faint soul. Root-land. Shoal. Mother.
Each visit signals the darkness waiting.
Your battle with language, with silence, invoked.
I stretch the word and weave this dirge for you.
* * *
Note: “If I were to give you life, what could I give you?” is from Antonio Porchia’s Voices, translated by W.S. Merwin.
“Ghost, with a Line from Porchia” first appeared in Underfoot in October 2017.
I’ll Turn But Clouds Appear
I’ll Turn But Clouds Appear
You gather and disperse and nothing I do salves my hunger.
Where are you, if not here among the roots of dead flowers
or inches below the window’s opening
in the leaf-filtered light. Or spread across
the ceiling, caught in filaments of expelled
hope. Savoring motion, I look up and address the Dog Stars,
longing to catch your attention. But clouds muffle
my words, and instead I turn
to the fragrance of tomato and garlic and spice
wafting into the night. What could bring you back?
Not love. Not wine. Not solitude, nor the sound of my voice.
I spoon out the sauce, cautiously, and wait.
* * *
“I’ll Turn but Clouds Appear” first appeared in Bindlestiff.
Sheng-yu’s Lament (after Mei Yao-ch’en)
Sheng-yu’s Lament (after Mei Yao-ch’en)
First heaven took my wife,
and now, my son.
These eyes will never dry
and my heart slowly turns to ash.
Rain seeps far into the earth
like a pearl dropped into the sea.
Swim deep and you’ll see the pearl,
dig in the earth and you’ll find water.
But when people return to the source,
we know they’re gone forever.
I touch my empty chest and ask, who
is that withered ghost in the mirror?
* * *
“Sheng-yu’s Lament” is included in my micro-chapbook, No Eye But The Moon’s, available via free download at Origami Poems Project.
The transliteration on Chinese-poems.com reads:
Heaven already take my wife
Again again take my son
Two eyes although not dry
(Disc) heart will want die
Rain fall enter earth in
Pearl sink enter sea deep
Enter sea can seek pearl
Dig earth can see water
Only person return source below
Through the ages know self (yes)
Touch breast now ask who
Emaciated mirror in ghost
As Blue Fades
As Blue Fades
Which defines you best, a creaking lid or the light-turned flower?
The coffee’s steam or smoke wafting from your hand.
Your bowls color my shelves; I touch them daily.
Sound fills their bodies with memory.
The lighter’s click invokes your name.
And the stepping stones to nowhere, your current address.
If the moon could breathe would its breath flavor our nights?
I picture a separate one above your clouded island.
The dissipating blue in filtered light.
Above the coral. Above the waves and ocean floor far below.
Above the space your ashes should share.
Where the boats rise and fall, like chests, like the waning years.
Like a tide carrying me towards yesterday’s reef.
Or the black-tailed gull spinning in the updraft.
“As Blue Fades” first appeared in Underfoot in October 2017.
Meditation in White
Meditation in White (Lilies)
Clouds pass my high window quickly, abandoning the blue.
Indefinite mass, indeterminate, impersonal
as only intimates may know.
Though you lay there, nothing remained in the bed.
Which is the blank page’s gift, the monotone
or a suggestion of mist and stripped bones.
The nurse marked the passage with pen on paper.
Renewal, departure. A rising.
I accept the ash of suffering
as I accept our destination, the morning
and its offerings, with you in synthesis,
complete and empty, shaded in contrast,
wilting, as another opens. Laughter eases the way.
***
This was first published in Shadowtrain, and made its first appearance here in March 2016.
