Letter to Neruda

You have been my woman’s lover now for
seven years, ever since your two souls met
at La Isla Negra. Yes, I have known
about your assignations for some time,
your breakfast tête-à-têtes, your late-night trysts,

midday intermezzos punctuated
by wine and passionate exclamation.
I have unearthed your letters, your amorous
affirmations secreted in her books,
your verses excerpted in diaries.

I beg of you: Release her captive heart.
You have no need of her, your mistresses
surround you, innumerable are your
conquests. And I – I have only her. She
fills my soul, without her I am empty.

I love her, and sometimes in her absent
eyes I see the flash of remembrance – and
I think sometimes she might still love me too.
But I have not your art, nor scope. Passion
flows like torrents from your pen, where

they are quenched from my own. You are a force
of nature, an earthquake, a hurricane.
And I am left to woo her with nothing
but my shopworn metaphors, my contrived
rhymes, my incompetent pentameter.

So I have gathered for you this ransom,
one hundred and forty poems, all I have.
I have packed them in my well-worn suitcase,
in verses of small denominations.
Take them. Only tell her you will see her

no more, that your art is for another,
that you will always cherish your moments
together. Then unbind her hands, loose her
blindfold, let her run back to me – back to
my waiting heart, inadequate but true.

Time Zones

Tonight I am looking at the moon
that was the moon
in your sky last night.

I stir and walk, and you
walk with me,
you in the Friday morning haze
and I underneath this Thursday sky
that was your sky last night.

Far off, the world begins to turn
in its unfinished current,
rain falls, the month changes color,
the windrift wavers
between stillness and monsoon.

But I,
I feel no need to question why.
Seven hours, seven thousand
miles apart, tonight
you are only
a whisper away
from my outstretched hand.

And tomorrow the morning
that is your morning
will be my morning too.

The Way the World Ends

The world will come to an end tonight.
Not with comets slanting through the rafters,

Or tidal waves surging across the coast,
Or the braze of volcanoes, unsubmerged.

Not with the earth’s decimated orbit
Spiralling it into a strangled sun,

Not with the rush of spurious armies
Turning fallow the scope of mankind’s dreams.

But with the last of your kiss, fading
From the sepulchre of these lips: it ends.

And the night sky may as well be shattered,
And the sun never rise again, or set,

And the stars may as well burn to cinders,
For all the worth they are, when you are gone.

How More Beautiful You Are

after Kotaro Takamura

How more beautiful you are, with every veil,
Every adornment, shed.

Your body, by the wash of years refined;
Boundless, like a meteor.

Your soul, insubstantial to vanity or scandal,
Moving swiftly, as desire.

How long, centuries? Before this consummation
Into woman?

There, wrapped in your silence, it is as if you were
Creation’s first triumph.

Ah, sometimes my heart leaps in me amazed:
How more beautiful you are.

Butterfly Effect

Because your father stopped in Strandja park
to point out that whirligig of wings – blue
argus, he said, Ultraaricia
Anteros – you were dazzled forever.

Those wings wafted you here, ten thousand six
hundred kilometres away, to the
University of California,
Davis. Encyclopedia of Insects

in arm, you haul yourself up the stairwell
of Briggs Hall. Your frail sandal spindles on
the threshold – and you trip, a beautiful,
crippled Lycaenidaen specimen,

into the butterfly net of my arms.
Somewhere in Texas, a hurricane stirs.

Down on the Labrador: Towing the Nickerson

I have towed my father’s schooner further
than any vessel has ever been pulled:

two thousand, one hundred and twenty-nine
kilometres, to where my spirit lies

exhausted, pining like an orphaned child
for a half-remembered home, far away.

And I have towed icebergs, shoals of them, from
where my grandfather sailed, in waters deep

as the waters of creation; and whales
more ponderous than any edifice

of man’s design or art. Towed here by my
inconsequential heart, encircling solace

like a familiar harbour, flinging deep
in wave-tossed life these anchors for my soul.

The First Deadly Sin

Here is how it works: The foreskin retracts,
protuberant incisors declinate
a subtle ivory, viperine fangs.

Pressed to your incandescent curve of skin,
I pierce your flesh. You gasp, feel it quicken
in you, repulsion and desire. But no,

Not yet the sweet inhalation of your
frail innocence, not yet the blood rush. First
into you my venom I ejaculate:

A luciferian delirium sings in
your veins, a paralytic lullaby
of musk, of peace, of lust, of sleep, of trust:

Until all struggles cease, until you yield
into my hands your soul. And then I drink.

Guernica

That night, in Paris, when the news came that
they had bombed the village, you kept waking
from sleep. In one dream I heard you call out
‘Maya, Maya,’ your mistress’ daughter.
Across from you I lay barren, afraid to breathe.

Next morning, the soul that just yesterday
wept was quiet, charcoal in hand, as you
tried to corral in the vast cold room the last
nuance of the night’s dream into a
silhouette of form, reshaping your nightmare:

Underneath the condor’s swirling legion,
the bull’s retreat, the stallion’s agony,
the screaming of the sixteen hundred men
and women and children, a market day
turned into fire, a holocaust of innocents.

Once you stopped, watching me. You strode over,
cut a swatch of my hair, fixed it onto
a sketch, as a collage; then fell to work again.
Three hundred drawings, and every drawing
a dream, and every dream another death.

Finally, on the fifteenth day, you stretched
your mural’s canvas, twelve feet by twenty-six,
slant-braced to fit under the studio ceiling.
There, on that expanse, you found a way
to give voice to those unspoken horrors:

The woman with a dead child in her arms;
the man engulfed in flames; the subjugated
bull; stigmata on a soldier’s open palm;
a javelin in a writhing horse; daggers and fire;
and the lightbulb’s bale, unblinking stare.

From across the room I aimed my camera
at you, my sniper’s rifle, counting each shot
with your every stroke – color against white,
politics against art, anger against tears, as you
waged across the canvas your uncivil war.

Hallelujah

You may have heard this song before,
A carol to a mournful score,
But you don’t really care for Christmas, do you?
When all you hear is reveille,
The treble of the cavalry,
An old, unspoken psalm, this Hallelujah.

     Hallelujah, Hallelujah.

God rest ye merry, gentlemen,
Your soldiers round on Bethlehem;
The angels, they all say they see right through you.
How swift your brothers disappear,
Your sisters' eyes avert in fear,
And in their hearts they stifle Hallelujah.

     Hallelujah, Hallelujah.

The columns burn, the fourth, the fifth;
The major falls, the armor lifts,
And finally the foe who near outdrew you.
Your ammunition's shown its worth,
Now maybe there’ll be peace on earth,
Not just this cold and broken Hallelujah.

     Hallelujah, Hallelujah.

Maybe there’s a God above,
And maybe all you've known of love
Was when a painted Death knelt down and blew you.
But Cohen sang and Lennon fell;
If there’s a heaven, there’s a hell,
Where all the damned compose their Hallelujahs.

     Hallelujah, Hallelujah.

To a Woman Now Gone

after Kotaro Takamura

Sparrows tap at the window glass, and I stir.
Beside me your gloxinia blossoms, as if you were here.

And all my senses suddenly awaken to a morning breeze
Wafting in at 5 a.m. with your fragrant ease.

White sheets flung off, I stretch my arms in the light,
In this morning sunshine that is your smile.

Your whisper in me asks, how will this day be unfolding?
You stand and watch me, all-seeing, all-knowing.

As if I have become a child;
As if you have become a mother, mine.

Here still, here still.
You have become everything, what moves, what fills.

And though I am the least worthy of your grace,
Here I am – by you surrounded, enfolded, embraced.

The Dream

where a bird
night after starry night
while I'm asleep
unfolds its phantom wings
          - P.K. Page

is perhaps
a dream of you.
And the bird your
last unfinished verse
before you fell to earth.
And the night this world
without you, suddenly
overwhelmed with
loss, a song unheard,
where a bird

finds feathered rest.
And I am stirred
to whisper words
as would fly through
this glass air, as would
recall you, bright
as metal, incandescent
coal, rose-fragrant
words to take flight
night after starry night

when your absence
tests this faltering
hologram of faith.
No, not my words, but yours,
migrant across the pages,
flying across the deep
pleated blue of the ocean,
like arial shadows
in memory steeped.
While I’m asleep

your verses thread
into my dream,
as if they would embroider
with flowers and birds
this heart that only knows
that you are missing
still. Night after starry night
while I’m asleep
your poetry sings,
unfolds its phantom wings.

The River-Merchant's Wife: An Answer

I have revisited my parents’ house in Chokan,
where we played before we were married.
You would still recognize it, the same
long-stemmed vines intertwining the front gate,
budding with flowers. So bashful then!
I tried to make you laugh, striding with stilts
and plucking blue plums to juggle
eight feet in the air. I watched
as your lips struggled with your eyes.

And I have drifted by the look-out rock,
where we pledged a thousand times
that we would grow together old, never look back.
Weathered now, where your sandals have filed
a melancholy pattern on its face.

I have tried to speak to you
in your dreams; but yours are always
the same: A big storm shakes
through the woods of Pa Ling,
tearing branches and leaves,
turning the whole world black.

I call you, but the wind drowns out
my voice. And when you wake up,
shivering, I am invisible, your eyes
look past me at the moon.

On the walkway, outside,
the mosses have taken the steps now.

And so I flow with the wind,
whirling with each western gust,
lifting the hair from your face as you
search the horizon toward Hsiang Tan.

And I flow with the river,
swirling with the current, until I reach you,
press against the soft skin of your feet,
as you wait for me, ankle-deep
in the waters past Cho-fu-Sa.
.....

How to Sharpen a Knife

Your metaphor is your whetstone; choose well.
Perhaps a swallow, a comet, a bell,

an amethyst, the moon. Wet it with tears,
a typhoon, the amber sap wrung from fears.

Lay one side of the blade, dull edge against stone,
and hone it thus, hard, as though against bone.

In one direction only; back and forth,
and the metal splays rough, loses its worth.

Now the other side, slow easy strokes, same
direction, wide edge to the point of pain.

Tendered thus, when you thrust the sharpened
blade between unwary ribs, it should rend

as if through parchment, shearing burnished art
past muscle, sinew, deep into the heart.

Flying to Nantucket

I have set out a course to Nantucket,
Seeking wind, with my wings out to tack it;
But my heart, it lies shattered
Off the hurricane-battered
South shore of the island Nantucket.

This July, I am following his flight,
With his wife and her sister, that night;
Past Point Judith, over water,
Along the path that was shorter,
And away from the coastline’s faint light.

Did he know what was going to come,
When the fog rose, embalming their sun?
Did she try to stay calm,
Put her hand on his arm,
When she knew day was finally done?

I have set out my course past Nantucket,
Forging north, with my compass to track it.
But my heart, it lies torn
Beneath waters forlorn,
As I fly, as I fly past Nantucket.
.....

The Seven Last Words

Pater, dimitte illis, quia nesciunt, quid faciunt.

They hadn’t seen the wire, threading the grim
eyelet of the dead soldier’s left boot, so
when he shouted, it was too late, the pin
had pulled, and the incendiary blew.

Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?

But not before he was able to throw
himself onto the I.E.D., sparing
his troop the shrapnel flash, the inferno
that tore his chest like a lover’s raging.

Mulier, ecce filius tuus.

And in the middle of his agony,
he heard his mother’s voice: and there he was,
five again, tumbled tricycle, skinned knee
being wrapped up in tenderness and gauze.

Sitio.

Pulled back, he felt the drought in his mouth salved
by the salt of his own blood, where his jaw
had ruptured, ripped. He felt himself hauled, shoved
across pavement, into the transport’s maw.

Hodie mecum eris in Paradiso.

His brother, lost to another army,
to another war, sat across the way,
squeezed his hand. Real enough, it seemed; quietly
saying, It’s okay. I’m here. It’s okay.

Consummatum est.

And it was. Around him he saw them – crushed,
pounding his chest, weeping, wiping his face –
but all there, saved by his instinctive rush
into the abyss, taking their place.

In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum.

And his breathing slowed into an even
skate, his eyes closed, and his spirit rose high,
wings like a dreamed Chagall, through the open
window, past rooftops, into violet sky.

The Treachery of Dreams

Ceci n'est pas une - This is not a poem.
Still green, the apple contemplates the man.
Le fils de l'homme, il contemple la pomme.
Les hommes en chapeaux fall like summer rain.

Still green, the apple contemplates the man.
The artist paints a portrait of an egg.
Les hommes en chapeaux fall like summer rain.
Across a grove of leaves, a rider's fled.

The artist paints a portrait of an egg.
A verdant apple rises in the east.
Across a grove of leaves, a rider's fled.
The seraph turns his back upon the beast.

A verdant apple rises in the east.
A horse and rider shutter through the woods.
The seraph turns his back upon the beast.
Two lovers kiss, their faces wrapped in shrouds.

A horse and rider shutter through the woods.
A doorway opens in a twilit tree.
Two lovers kiss, their faces wrapped in shrouds.
A train emerges from the fireplace deep.

A doorway opens in a twilit tree.
Un parasol, des fleurs, a woman's loves.
A train emerges from the fireplace deep.
Le thérapeute encages two white doves.

Un parasol, des fleurs, a woman's loves.
Dusk falls to home from empires of the day.
Le thérapeute encages two white doves.
Un château levitates above a bay.

Dusk falls to home from empires of the day.
Three men precess a waning crescent moon.
Un château levitates above a bay.
The fragile rose has grown to fill the room.

Three men precess a waning crescent moon.
Les hommes en chapeaux fall like summer rain.
The fragile rose has grown to fill the room.
Still green, the apple contemplates the man.

Les hommes en chapeaux fall like summer rain.
Le fils de l'homme, il contemple la pomme.
Still green, the apple contemplates the man.
Ceci n'est pas une - This is not a poem.
.....

Sustenance

          Ingredients:
3 pounds pork shoulder, cubed to 1" size
1 cup orange juice, sour to bitter
1 hot green pepper, diced
1 large onion, finely chopped
1/2 cup sliced shallots
1 teaspoon each of salt, black pepper
thyme
          On the kitchen
television, the evening programming
brings in the latest from Port-au-Prince,
a different litany of figures: 7.0 magnitude;
245,000 buildings destroyed; over 160,000
dead; 3,000,000 injured and homeless. And
here, in my chef’s kitchen, I am preparing
griot,
          a calorically
sinful dish we’d fallen improbably
in love with, on a trip five years past.
Paired with riz djon-djon, an exquisite side
of rice sautéed in garlic and butter and
a type of tiny, aromatic mushroom
from the northern sweep of
Haiti.
          Everything
in a large pot, marinated overnight
in the refrigerator, so that the flavours
infuse the meat. Placing the pot
on the stove, I fill it with water until
it just covers all the mixture, then
bring things to a simmer.
45 minutes.
          But nothing
is the same anymore; not the Cathédrale
Notre-Dame de L'Assomption or its
lighthouse cupola where we made our
pledges; not Pétionville where you shared me
banana pésée under Antillean sunshine; not
l’Université d’Etat, where I rediscovered
love.
          Only to lose it.
I am tearing off the mushroom stems now, the
inedible parts, like the pieces of our lives
we cast off, bury, try to forget, hoping
that it leaves us more whole than we were
before, hoping that this time we will not
taste that caustic undertone, acerbic and
bitter.
          Like a dispassionate
oracle, the televised satellite stream
pronounces its dreadful aphorisms:
near the epicentre, an obliterated Léogâne;
Petit-Goâve destroyed; a Jacmel broken and
desolate; the holocaust of a Port-au-Prince
put asunder by the earth’s titanic
shrug.
          And I am consumed
by the immensity of it, drowned in the loss
of you, overwhelmed by the triage of Haiti,
my heart, and the demands of this griot, this
melange of memories that was to be my comfort
food, burning in oil, 1/2 cup of despair.
And suddenly I am texting, over and over,
Yele,
          Yele, Haiti, to the number
scrolling on the periphery of my vision,
sending out pieces of my soul to wander
among the dispossessed, to assuage
the hungry, trickling droplets to the
thirsty stream, trying in desperation
to stem this raging, inexhaustible
fire.

A Mother

Next year, we promised ourselves,
we'd have to get it for her next year,
that sculpture in cork and ivory:
framed in a world of glass,
a house smaller than her thumbnail
and trees and reeds
and a bridge to an island
where miniature cranes spread their wings
for flight.

When she saw it first, a month ago,
at that shop in Ayala,
she held it up to the light
with both hands.
She was so afraid it would slip!

Her dreams were larger
than our twelve-year-old pockets.
Instead, papa helped us wrap up
a china cat we'd found
in a sea front store.
We hid it under the towels
in the closet.

That afternoon we put on records
and papa did impressions
with a made up guitar.
Then there was that smoky, rich, funny
smell coming from the oven...
We looked at each other, then raced
to the kitchen in twos.
She laughed, and he laughed too,
as she scraped
the burnt-out bottom of his coffee cake
from the pan.
We didn't.

After dinner we gathered around her,
our hearts beating
like so many small wings.
First the white ribbon, then the box,
then the layered tissues.
"Oh!" she said. "Oh!"
and she held it to her cheek.

There, between the lamplight
and the window, rocked in his arms,
she held it to her cheek.

Twelve Stones on a Necklace

1
Air, air. She surfaced, gasping,
her exhaustion trailing her in adularescent bubbles,
like a flaw in the sea’s blue moonstone.

2
Too soon, you vanish into the intaglio of memory.
Where your visage fades into the night’s black onyx,
the marcasite of stars.

3
The mirror tells her it's time.
She takes them off at last, the amethyst earrings,
allows herself to settle in the middle of the double bed.

4
A Saint-Saëns concerto, La Muse et le Poète.
Over the mother-of-pearl inlay on the cello,
your fingers decipher the sphinx' second riddle.

5
You unearth love with a geological intuition,
cleaving this igneous heart to reveal a hidden feldspar,
shining, a labradorite iridescence.

6
Transfigured by Magritte:
your eyes of celestine fire, your lips the blush of rose quartz,
floating in the evanescence of your face.

7
Bipolar moon, you render fire and ice, hematite and opal,
love’s breathless gasp and the wolf’s dark exhalation,
tranquility and storm.

8
A lotus flower framed in a trellis of leaves.
A crane, its beak lifted into a spray of peach.
Ribbons of jade braid into a celadon spring.

9
An Abyssynian with topaz eyes surveys its
colossal domain. Ozymandias, king of kings,
on the precipice of the bedroom dresser.

10
Shadowed in a facet of the rainforest's emerald face,
the anaconda uncoils an ancient geometry.
Finally we are, facing infinity, breathless.

11
Five miles above the Atlantic, you fall into dreaming.
Somewhere between Paris and San Francisco,
the sky turns the color of sapphire.

12
For you I wish that these poems were rubies,
borne by my own caravan from Xi'an out of Shaanxi,
through Persia, along the northern Silk Road