i know it's safe in this walled city cobbled
out of many a forced metaphor
to plagiarize my twenty-one-year-old heart
because no one's going to read it
with it's broken promises, vagrant enthusiasms,
befuddling hints, and obliterated faith.

it's an ancient kingdom
whose once-known lines
i'm tracing
in the dark;
mostly history
whose possible future
has not yet been revealed.

in the first fold of morning light
my jaded heart is setting out
like a haggard gypsy caravan, wandering back
to that old copse of trust-filled beginnings,

inching toward an immeasurable darkness,
every year like a door left cracked open,
or a faucet dripping through the night,
or a three-corned tear in silk lingerie. . .

a fully cataloged museum of circumspection
and amputation. (for instance, 'there is always
a moment or two in the course of a theft
when you forget you're stealing something
and on top of that, you can't really stand
all this stealing going on.')

whoever runs off with something ought to
at least take care of it--
rains, hearts, shameless vows,
words waiting for me to force them
into another bad poem

do you think
that isolation
and loneliness
are turning me into an old woman
staying here among
the thin, dying          grasses

wiping away rust
from the inner workings
of the waterclock

just on the other side of this wall,
looking back     i can see
children clapping their hands
sunlight sparkles there   only for an instant
the waters of the lake are dark green
shadows melt into a kiss
on the grass there are drops of dew
also fallen leaves

winter takes off his wet boots
in the january thaw
life and clouds all mingle here
then snow falls again on this
small infinity

and at the end of this wall of stone
with its slow-growing lichens
hangs the flag of a shadow

even though it is true   that poets
never want to play by the rules
always demanding  that everything
should be beautiful

remember that the curve of my embrace is forever
it will never sink away
it is bent here for love
to protect the pure, cloudless sky
that is like a small cameo
pinned to infinity

it is love
that brings me closer
to that eternal blue

i'm not sure if i am
any longer good at hitching a horse
to a plow.  neither have i set a fence post
in recent years...

i have written poems that the world
will soon forget,
planned a future with a man
who wasn't there,
listened to a pervasive silence.

there is an old saying,
"when the general leaves
for the battlefield
he does not turn back
in remembrance."

behind me, there is a bald hill
of prickly trees
and a lonely house leaning on it--
i do not look back.

around that house,
all through the long night,
the wind wanders over memory
erasing pieces of the sky

the setting sun is painting
new autumn colors on the leaf tips.
in the Mill River Cemetery,
your baby brother sits on a small stone,
telling stories to an audience of the dead.

the array of flowers recalls
a playground of children
in their favorite outfits.  it's a small
neighborhood, where the residents
look out for each other and in the poet's corner,
a small angel sits on a stone.
i cant help weeping, although i know

you are here and other places, too.
you are the wind, the birds, the sky,
a river without end, ashes like stardust,
love never buried.  i run through
the tunnel of time and meet you
face to face by the sea.

"early autumn weather,"
you say with a kind smile, "is like an olive pit,
round in the middle and pointed
at both ends.  soon, in the crisp
mornings and evenings, on the
golden wind, you will smell autumn
moonlight and winds salty
from half a lifetime over the sea..."

you gaze at the sky
into a long distance, your head
turning with the flight of birds.
your eyes change colors
as the sun sets.  you hand me
a wisp of smoke that will rise
to become a cloud and turn into a
shower of gold as it returns
to the sea.  you smile at me
and say:

"we are still together in
the ocean of eternity,
radiating the light of love."
then, after puffing air
on my windowpane, you draw
a slender tree with your finger
shedding tears of gold
and at the end of a narrow path
where autumn leaves drift and fall,
you write the words:
i forgive you

i've decided--
coming home to nothing
is worse than
staying home with nothing.
i can't fix
either one.

are you sleeping?
or are you just pretending?
the Goddess of Mercy
is floating face down
in the river.

i know--and therefore i fear--
there will not be another like you.
there wasn't previous, why
should there be after?

should i tell you my real name?
it's She who has seen the light.
there is no cure for not-knowing
except knowing,
however bad the cure tastes.
the disease is death
and disaffection.

take pity on me. you came too late my love,
we were both already dead.
the dream hovers over me at night
with its great wings

and watches me sadly.

don't forget me--

when it came to you, my love,
i was fierce
and otherworldly

once my cries would have shattered
the moon's windowpanes.  once
when you set the slope of your back
against me, the alphabet crumbled--
i didn't dare to cross the borders
of my lamp's light

for the longest time.

spring came back then and magnolias
floated their soft flowers
onto a garbage dump.
i was half-in, half-out of a dream.
in the long fingers of the wind,
i could hear nothing.  Nothing at all.

the sky sculpted a soundless vault like a sepulcher.

poetry was like the cries
of a mountain climber
tumbling into an abyss
filling up a concert hall
with everything unsaid crossing
the bridge of a violin.

from the horizon where fossils slept,

the sun rose, breaking the cycle of sleep.
i did not dream any more.
sounds like particles of light came
from an unknown distance. But i could
no longer hear them.

this was the sadness before the birth of the word "sadness"
shining in the space between suffering and relief
like a glittering necklace.

now i remember.
now i dream everything

what kind of poet would i be if
i didn't pine for love?
i want to bare my heart to the moon
in a puddle of moonsilver; huddle
in my nest of need
as love floods my inner marshes.

your absence changes nothing.

the night opens to receive
the ghostly lightflakes of the moon,
open, as my mind is open.
the moist night air brings back
to my all-remembering heart, your ghost,
borne on a wheel of wind.

somewhere, your heart must love me,
must drag at secret moorings;
must remember me, miss me;
must loiter at the Jade Palace Portal.

only look but through my murky heart
to a love that is crystal clear
and watch our separation
like a brush-stroke disappear--

the peachtree in the poem is still here, unflinching.

even the fountain's falling blade
hangs in the air unbroken, and says "Wait!"
while Li Po, brought drunk to court, takes up his
brush and washes his face
among the lilies, then rewrites the song
of Lady Flying Swallow
into a poem that will go on waiting for you
for another one thousand two hundred years

The white clouds and blue sky are like her clothes,

The delicate peonies are like her face.

Spring breeze stroking the fence for view,

The flowers are fully blooming with dew.

If it is not the fairy Mountain of Jades,

It must be the Jasper Platform on skies

Where god lovers meet under the moonlight.

            *          *          *

Fragrance comes from a branch of red brightness

The fairy lover runs to embrace the long-lost king.

Who could be the match in the Han palace

of The lovely Flying Swallow in a new dress?

~Li Po

the west is golden
and the sun is setting
in the M'ing Dynasty.

on one of these late afternoons,
it will be setting
in eternity,
bleeding to death
in the pacific ocean.

let's face it -- it only takes
a moment to take a wrong turn;
for M'ing to turn into Ch'ing.
no amount of cleansing
can make a dung-heap fragrant,
no amount of pulling
can make a shoot grow faster.

meanwhile, under this great black canopy of stars :

they come to me--
my dead ancestors,
dreams,
and lovers who lost me;
ghosts blowing smoke rings
whose triumph
is the defeat
of oblivion.

but only as long as i am alive.

i once sent a drawing of the calligraph
for "double happiness" to a lost lover.
the wind was tugging at my hair,
my eyes were as shiny as a hall of mirrors.
nearsighted, i couldn't see
what was written in the stars.

meanwhile, under this great gray covering of clouds :

i was wrong.
my dead ancestors,
dreams,
and the lovers who lost me
live on.

i am the ghost unfit for speech
who lingers long
reluctant to let go
of their dark monolithic shapes

and looming mysteries

not so much a pessimist
as a realist.

I know there are hard days ahead

easier only when there is love
instead of loss

there is a distance
between the sharply drawn breath
and the sigh--

which is as long
and as short
as a lifetime.

happiness has its difficulties
just as salt has its wound.

even the sky has its constellations.
emptiness is a space full of what has been
and what is to be.

my devotion has everything in it.  your closed eyes,
my desire, the ache of fulfillment.

the pages of our story, riffled by the wind,
are numbered
but not in consecutive order.

the ending?        that part
has been left unwritten;

is still unknown to us

the flight of life is so swift
it's like a screenshot of eternity--
time goes swiftly there, it just never ends.

in our lives, when we look at the moon,
we see it as it was a second ago, and the sun
we see is 8 minutes old.  as for the stars--
don't even go there. other galaxies
are millions of lifetimes in the past.

so each one of us is a different event
in space time.  when my best friend died
i was numb, walking around in no-time;
yet when i asked her if she was now
somewhere on the air or in space, she said,
"relatively not."
i cried then, but only in my sleep.

okay, so, where was i...? oh yes, i was
in a preview of coming attractions, to whit
my life, which is moving at the speed of a one act play.
"never assume that the actors are sticking to the script."
sometimes there are last minute changes
or an understudy doesn't know the correct lines..

there is an irony between 'what should have been'
and 'what is', don't you think?
some examples......when you see him you will be glad;
you will love him... and he will never forsake you."

......"although i must go now in sorrow and in pain, with
sighing and with weeping,
still, i must go."

without clothes or words the message would be different.

the world might be golden and amass with warmth and beauty.

the flight of light is swifter than life.
whether i go my own way in the sand dunes
of an hourglass,unheard in whispered places
like fragmentation grenades caught
on lilac boughs,

eternity is swift.  and there i'll be
writing this lone poem.
sorry.  i meant long, not lone