Sun’s everywhere after
days of rain. Not
a point of light,

dawn is a flood
that has been
waiting for a dam

to break.

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Rain arrives as ordered on the first day
of mourning, gray sufficient
for thirty thousand, silent, and counting.

Counting. They say birds vanished,
left the sky without song
before the earth broke
on the crest of a slow wave
rolling plains to mountains. The whole
world shuddered at the immensity of silence.

Far from the center, birdsong and voices
on cellphones contain what is left
of silence, weave it into webs

to calm the earth shell of a rolling ocean
we mistook for solid ground.

Shenzhen, 19 May 2008

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All that climbing to forget a mountain
is no more than an emblem
at the intersection of ten thousand
floating lives.
                   We tell ourselves the place
we stand is solid ground while we count corpses
that say it never was. It never
has been. Under the weight of all
these broken lives whisper war
is the luxury we cannot afford. Our lives
depend on fragile performances of humanity
fleeting as the floating mountains
on which, always disappointed,
we always stake them.

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but every person
who stops on the street
for a photo to prove
he was here stands
under a flag

one in three
has a red rectangle
with five yellow
stars on a cheek

and the boulevard
is lined with them

a cluster gathers
around a speaker
and a drum
raising fists
chanting in time
with the beat

and three flags wave
in front of them

a man makes a video
of the torch on a television
monitor by the walk

pointing his camera
at the screen
filming film
so he will have
the story of a story
not politics
to take home

a story of a story
about being somewhere
draped in one flag
or another

waiting for the torch
Shenzhen, 8 May 2008

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