West Lake
First gyres of snow. The broken bridge
swept with the husks of osmanthus
blossoms, father bunching gravel
with a bamboo cane. Leifeng pagoda
splinters into eigengrau, and pot-bellied
cranes part the flying eaves with their beaks.
The White Snake moults within the kiln
of concrete, colours each capillary
wave: Her son prays on a granite bank.
From curlicues of mist, father fishes
out two persimmons, glinting
like cinnabar, and he rests his musty
gourd on my philtrum, flinging flesh,
tea leaves into the latticed gale.
I peer through the lashes
of the weeping willows.
The moon engulfs the lochial sun
to lightly cleave the three pools.
Father spells our surnames.
From the field of chrysanthemums
her lotus-eye yawns open.
She slouches on his cane
and her fan-flutter irises
inhale the pale vapours of my
immortality.
Plum Rain
The heads of alfalfa droop beside the lake.
Lao Lao clasps her hands behind her back,
bends to brush a stamen with her lips.
The burial mounds fall like fruit
on the hirsute boughs of plane trees.
She reads from the granite headstone:
Friend, you are with Lotus Peak now.
Close by, a multicelled storm
is a train somersaulting into a tunnel.
It has been night all day: Plum-puddles
condense into the contrails of military
jets. The Southern air convects
above the starlings and a man slaps
his ox-flanked scooter engine awake.
Lao Lao, you are genuflected over mud.
I lean to touch the contours
of your embroidered peonies:
I cannot.
Nanjing, your rhizomes twine
around my ankles. Let me descend
this marrowed hill. I am finally
running towards the paper lanterns,
the grasses of the living.
Aubade #1
After Xinyue Huang
The didi-breathed air condenses
on our eyelids. You say in the dark
even the yellow mountains can be glaciers.
Things in the mirror appear closer than they seem.
Blue quarks spin close but do not kiss.
We enter the tunnel of peach blossoms
& I feel your heartbeat halve like a whale’s.
A doppler shift of names–you ask if
the characters mean peach pools or petals.
The moon is beautiful tonight, isn’t it?
It is a gauge in the sky’s distended earlobe
–Or a drone, the driver says.
Here, we call it the eye in the sky.
The katabatic wind lifts
the skeletons of moulins.
A hummingbird’s strongest parts are its wings.
All that to lift a body the shape of a fist.
It clutches the wow and flutter of your heart.