[mauve, yellow]
a cento after Larry Levis
She complains to her three distinct, personal gods:
eyes, lips, dreams. No one. The sky and the road.
To be whole, and lonely again, the tongue tries to
go back down the throat, wallpapered with cries
of birds: astonished whites and reds. And when
it seems possible to disappear into someone,
absence takes the shape of beaten snow,
sleep without laughter, vines twisted into
different kinds of silence -- gray, vagrant,
the color of cold sky, wind the size of a wrist.
A body wants to be held and held and
what can you do about that? One day she will
fall through herself like an anvil, a girl's comb,
a feather, into a world where even words grow
thin and transparent, like pale wings of ants
that fly out of the oldest houses. Slowly
she will become a light summer dress,
a random mauve or yellow that celebrates
nothing except mauve or yellow, as if no one
is ever at home inside a name -- without a name
the body can be anyone's, a small bitter seed
of tongue, a world uninhabited, without visitors,
beams and window glass letting go of themselves.
[sparks of a lantern from a river boat]
Corpses of the slain lay entwined,
Unburied, uncovered, scattered far and wide,
Envious that I alone could go home --
“How can you bear to leave us behind?”
- Ts-ai Yen (c. A.D. 200)
i.
Here, at the edge of sky, white
bones cover the plain. Lying
in the open, they won't be buried --
crows may have them.
Yellow weeds grow on the old
city wall below unbroken clouds,
a barrier piling cliffs upon crags
where blues darken and sink away.
Between earth and sky, a gull alone.
In courtyards overrun with thorns
and brambles, a wilderness moon
floods garden nooks, plum flowers
all fallen and gone, red
petals rising from purple stems.
Moon thins, and magpies cease to fly --
a dog barks amid the sound of water.
I look out on a great river.
I rinse my mouth and wash my feet,
sparks of a lantern from a river boat
the only light. Beneath the steps,
clustered sedge glitters with dew --
I am home, and close the gate.
ii.
My daughter is afraid of ghosts
I can't see. Show me, I say --
she points to the foot of stairs
where a small girl appears,
wet, edging round the room
until I cross over and lift her up,
soaking the front of my blouse.
She is thirsty so I give her
water to drink that streams
through sheer skin and gathers
in pools as I carry her to the door.
What she wants is to go back
to the sea, so I take her out
in cold rain to the river, step in,
and release her. For a moment
I imagine light tugs at my ankles,
myself afraid, before
fingers loosen and wash away.
In the house it is quiet, then a thud
from upstairs, a scraping step.
What's that, I ask -- my daughter
answers, now comes the mom.
***Section i. of "[sparks of a lantern from a river boat]" is a cento using lines from various translated Chinese poems as they appear in Sunflower Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry, Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, 1975. The epigraph is also a cento using lines from various translated poems of Ts-ai Yen (c. AD 200,) as they appear in Sunflower Splendor.
[red wanders to red]
a cento after Paul Celan
Red wanders to red, like poppies and
memory. It steps toward me on steady feet,
gives me a veil. “Take this for dreaming,”
says its stitchery. More than the dove,
more than the mulberry, Autumn nibbles its leaf
from my hand, wearing rings that are rusting.
What's dead put its arms around you, too--
hushed tongues that don't split off No from Yes,
so that a mouth might thirst for this, later--
voices veined with night, vibrating consonants,
ropes we hang the bell on. Unseen cathedrals,
rivers unheard, clocks deep in us are all hands,
like russet thorntrees in blossom,
in gorselight--hands we try teaching to sleep.
Muteness is roomy, a house that ticks toward us,
a green silence, a sepal. I lie beside you, empty,
audible, our conversation daygray.
There is earth inside words that bloom red--
like slender dog roses they break loose,
they float. We speak with blinded mouths,
seagreen needles stitching the split. I leaf
you open, uncurling each word from snow.
[morendo]
i
In the wilds there is a dead doe;
in white rushes it is wrapped.
Mornings we gather rushes to thatch,
evenings we braid them into ropes.
In the wilds lies a dead deer,
wrapped and bound with white rushes.
I linger, twining cassia sprigs into a knot
and binding ivy vines neatly into a sheaf.
Crows slowly unravel her eyelashes and pupils,
her face becomes wings.
In the wilds there is a dead doe;
the rushes and reeds grow dark.
ii
In your room is an unanswered note;
in plain linen words it is wrapped.
Mornings we gather phrases to share,
evenings we braid them into ropes.
In your room a note lifts and falls,
wrapped and bound with plain words.
I linger, twining loss into lines
and binding grief neatly into a sheaf.
Silence slowly unravels my mouth and tongue,
my voice wings into empty white.
In your room is an unanswered note;
words blur and grow still in the dark.
***Section i. of "[morendo]" is a cento using lines from various translated Chinese poems as they appear in Sunflower Splendor, and from poems by Larry Levis.