than my wish
to
see you as a man
scrubbing black ink from beneath his nails
when his goose hasn't quills enough
to
fly or, airborne, to glide.
He holds his hands up to dry unsmudged
like two smooth sheaves on which lines
merge and cross, verge and move off
and are said to need no translation.
Kai- Yu Hsu, the fact is unimaginable:
that a mountain of mud poured through the walls
of your house to entomb you and fill your mouth.
Better this: if, in this factless night,
the traveler climbs beyond clouds
to
scale the peak, he will become
its pinnacle, eroding and shadowless,
his throat enshrined by mineral quiet and moonlight.
ALDERS
It
is blue, the snow,
and colder than any name
you ever called me.
My
Balalaika.
My
Bloodless One.
A blue
which seems
to
seep from the earth,
from beneath your frozen eyelids.
The sun perches in the stiff, young alders,
puffs out its blond feath ers against this cold
we could have breathed back
to
life
like that titmouse in the matchbox.
But you won't turn your face
to
me.
When twilight deepens, I will
go out to keep the alders from dissolving
in the dark . I'll touch each one.
