Watching sparrows
snatch flying things
I cannot see
from air so thick
they swim in it,
it is hard to think of them
as death threats. This patio
is insect-free. The birds
beating wings fast as they can
to be still for the moment
necessary to pluck an
insect from flight
are virtuosos
of fly fishing,
a morning floor show
worth the risk.
They tap dance
on the translucent roof
while mayflies chant
there can be no pleasure
where there is no danger.
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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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The time will come when our silence will be
more powerful than the voices you strangle today.
-August Spies
At Shekou Walmart, street lamps
wave red flags, and nobody gathers
to sing the Internationale.
They’ve rounded up the rats
on Nanhai da dao
for the holiday,
and Garden City Mall
has cautiously conspired
to mass pink flowers
in the ocean of red
that lines the escalator
outside Starbucks.
Dao ke da feichang dao
Dao ke dao feichang dao
Voices still,
silence, small, will
carry on, nameless.
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Black dog likes the sound
of my feet on paving stone,
picks up the pace, falls
into it, slips on
a new step, dances
a universe he might
inhabit, tries it on
for size, turns at a voice
from one he does, pauses
till it catches him,
knows his goddess
by her step,
settles home
until another
dance draws him in.
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Low gray could be mistaken
for the weight of souls,
but it is light as April in
Oklahoma, and blackbirds on
every side street sing sun
that will be along by afternoon.
Du Mu must have found his tavern
hours ago. But it is too early
for sorrow here, and rain
looks more like hope than tears
in eyes accustomed to dry wind down
from mountains.
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“The rioters who wore cassocks were no real monks
and what they did is completely against Buddhist codes,”
said Ngawang Daindzin, a living Buddha.
All in all, it’s China’s Tibet, now and forever.
-Xinhua, 19 March 2008
Empty talk endangers the nation.
Practical work brings prosperity.
-a billboard in Shekou
There are living Buddhas
on every side of every war. Nothing
they do changes the coming into being
of it, the passing away of it.
Passing away catches the eye: bodies
count, the slow awakening
of corpses piled high
while cities burn.
Ten thousand Buddhas see
what is not there
after the city has died. But not
anger burning slow under
occupation, not
impatience at the slow
curve of a twisted universe turned,
one in ten thousand Buddhas
chants, to justice.
Resigned to the slow turn
of a world still
turning, all the time
in the world is occupied
with no. States
line up living Buddhas
like barricades, tip them
like buses in burning streets, check
body counts, silence what is
out of line, contain
slow burns off stage so
nobody shouts fire until
all that is left is ashes.
…on the fifth anniversary of the U.S. occupation of Iraq
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At the Mad Yak, a dancer
is contained in costumes
designed to make her
quaint and carry with her
a people who are of some other
world that might have been
but is not now. Her hands
are hidden by the long sleeves
of her costume, and her feet are
bound by steps written for tourists
in an idiom of occupation.
The audience is written
into the dance as well, Chinese on
one side, Euro-Americans
on the other, Tibetan
guides in back. I am
mesmerized by the authentic dance
of her eyes, weary beyond
words, which speak sadness
and will not be extinguished.
11 June 2004
Lhasa
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