The watering villa begins in China.
There, where the stream is like a flower
placed upon the absence of water.
It rolls, like a song, unfolding,
discovering itself, like a plaintain of light.
Shrouded in the mist of casual things,
and the decorations of deluded wood.
Inside the shop, the players arranged
themselves for this fairy tale—
but one, the saccharin type,
vowed for his final voyage
a map of that would trace the palms
of dead lover’s hands.
That would be nice, I suppose.
But suppose in the images of spring nudes,
in the passing gallantry of bootlessness and all,
if there was another way around the peninsula,
an inlet of jet, like oily color set
under the dampness of masks, and lamps, and night.
That would be another way to speak, shadow.
You can’t always speak in indigo.
You have to have another room to broker in.
The politics of desire require a laundry space,
a kind of personal inventory, where the names
can be bleached from the patina, and moss,
where rust can collect its dubious memory.
And who are you, dry one? I had to ask.
I have known you for about a dozen falls.
The wreckage of horses in paintings.
The sound of crackling lindens and lanes.
Oddly enough, the city too was all about it.
Scenes of teenage cellars and booming shopping.
The teacup, enamelled with the tiny sea—
the trusty messages that literally scissored air.
One was come back soon. And another:
we we should meet some day.
JULY 2009