for Wincie
Toward midnight, the sky pinks up.
The low cloud at the bottom of Tindastoll
turns the color of wild grapes.
Inside four women sit around a table,
oblivious to natural phenomena,
folding plastic bags
into neat white triangles.
"Ever so much nicer to store!"
They are performing women's work:
tidying up the garbage
until it looks like modern sculpture.
They have seen it all before:
midnight sun, revolution, disease, chaos.
Their female wisdom comprehends
there is nothing to be done about chaos,
except bring order and harmony
to plastic bags as if they were
wandering children needing to be tucked
in neatly for the long night.
------
Capitalist Music on Luoshi Road--Wuhan 1992
At the Sunday street market, three shabby men, the Music Torture Orchestra, move from peddler to peddler. The erhu player scratches out a tune that sounds like Grand Old Opry. The young one sings in a harsh falsetto clacking his two loud sticks to keep time. The wizened old man on a crutch holds out his palm till money crosses it.
At the feel of a few jiao, the music stops in midstroke. Crutch hops to the next peddler with newly empty palm, and the tune resumes until more jiao appear. The peddlers pay up grudgingly so that real customers can come spend. The music production racket moves on.
A hundred peddlers at their Sunday stalls in earshot. Sometimes the trio gets out only a few scratchy bars, only a few stick clacks, before the bought silence. Sometimes a stubborn peddler makes them finish a whole verse. Maybe he likes this free market music better than haggling over cabbages or reed brooms.
This backward jukebox disappears down the street, diminuendo poco a poco, crutch hopping from stall to stall like a human metronome.
At the Sunday street market, three shabby men, the Music Torture Orchestra, move from peddler to peddler. The erhu player scratches out a tune that sounds like Grand Old Opry. The young one sings in a harsh falsetto clacking his two loud sticks to keep time. The wizened old man on a crutch holds out his palm till money crosses it.
At the feel of a few jiao, the music stops in midstroke. Crutch hops to the next peddler with newly empty palm, and the tune resumes until more jiao appear. The peddlers pay up grudgingly so that real customers can come spend. The music production racket moves on.
A hundred peddlers at their Sunday stalls in earshot. Sometimes the trio gets out only a few scratchy bars, only a few stick clacks, before the bought silence. Sometimes a stubborn peddler makes them finish a whole verse. Maybe he likes this free market music better than haggling over cabbages or reed brooms.
This backward jukebox disappears down the street, diminuendo poco a poco, crutch hopping from stall to stall like a human metronome.
------
The Sea Eats What it Pleases
If you turn your back to the ocean
Do you think the tide will not find you
If it decides to rise a little higher
Than usual, to swallow an extra helping
Of gravel, to suck on your bones to clean
Its palate? The sea eats what it pleases
Whether you face it or give it your back.
No use having opinions about this.
But the sea does not hate you, or imagine
That you have wounded it with your avarice.
You cannot blaspheme the honor of water
Or insult the tide for tasting of salt.
Only humans, so newly risen from fish,
Imagine drowning each other for reasons.
If you turn your back to the ocean
Do you think the tide will not find you
If it decides to rise a little higher
Than usual, to swallow an extra helping
Of gravel, to suck on your bones to clean
Its palate? The sea eats what it pleases
Whether you face it or give it your back.
No use having opinions about this.
But the sea does not hate you, or imagine
That you have wounded it with your avarice.
You cannot blaspheme the honor of water
Or insult the tide for tasting of salt.
Only humans, so newly risen from fish,
Imagine drowning each other for reasons.
------
It's always curious when one person plucks out a few poems from a collection, deems it somehow representative. I may have turned one away from Bill Holm, may have alerted another to something radiant. (Meaning, my choice of, as it's all up to Bill Holm's words to push either way. I may have created a collision, or perhaps highlighted the "wrong" poems.) MDB said he was surpised at which poem of his Garrison Keillor selected for his Writer's Almanac, as was my friend Greg Watson (though pleased at being selected at all). For my book club, which consists of a high school English teacher, a friend who works with computers, and an entomologist, I selected Good Poems for its readability; many of my favorite poets appeared there (Maxine Kumin standing out in memory the best, also Joyce Sutphen and probably Adrienne Rich) but certainly not my favorite poems by these authors--and as we paged through the anthology, discussing favorites and why, I found myself wanting to create a companion anthology, one that highlights better samples from those writers.
I found reading this book this weekend haunting, especially with the large number of references to the poet's grave, the poet's mortality, living after loved ones are gone. The last:
Letting Go of What Cannot be Held Back
Let go of the dead now.
The rope in the water,
the cleat on the cliff,
do them no good anymore.
Let them fall, sink, go away,
become invisible as they tried
so hard to do in their own dying.
We needed to bother them
with what we called help.
We were the needy ones.
The dying do their own work with
tidiness, just the right speed,
sometimes even a little
satisfaction. So quiet down.
Let them go. Practice
your own song. Now.
I found reading this book this weekend haunting, especially with the large number of references to the poet's grave, the poet's mortality, living after loved ones are gone. The last:
Letting Go of What Cannot be Held Back
Let go of the dead now.
The rope in the water,
the cleat on the cliff,
do them no good anymore.
Let them fall, sink, go away,
become invisible as they tried
so hard to do in their own dying.
We needed to bother them
with what we called help.
We were the needy ones.
The dying do their own work with
tidiness, just the right speed,
sometimes even a little
satisfaction. So quiet down.
Let them go. Practice
your own song. Now.
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