You, who never tire of chaos, must comprehend this fire,
and the manner in which it deconstructs
the crackling logs, books we’ve read,
ablaze in orange and splintering blue.
Victims of our rage—it appears—they turn to white ash
that drifts in our nostrils, presses our tongues
in gestures of mute farewell. You, who never cared
for poetry or philosophy, part willingly with yours,
while I confess some doubt, hesitating
over tomes you’ve heard me mention with sighs.
We are wholly different, it seems, not in our desire
to purge, but in our methods of departing
from what remains of ordinary lives,
leaving behind what has touched us in time.

By Chinese Poet Yuan Hongri
Translated by Yuanbing Zhang

Open the eyes of your soul
and you will encounter your many souls
In timelessness, as if the sun and moon never set or rise
The world is only a book, phantom-like
The soul an invisible muse
Before the words were born, you were a giant
From the kingdom of gold who know not yourself.

灵魂是隐形的缪斯

睁开你的灵魂之眼你将看到无数个自己

没有时光之飞逝犹如日月从未落下与升起

世界只是一部幻影之书而灵魂是隐形的缪斯

在词语尚未诞生之前你曾是黄金之国的巨人不知何谓自己

                                          from crackling within
                                          innumerable neurons
                                          this very brief poem

The context of this room with its
one window, desk and bookshelves,
cheap art, is suddenly stifling.
The beautifully parallel horizontal blue lines
on white legal, and me staring left to right,

knowing that the ink when it meets
the resistance of the page
will feel introverted, compressed,
not at liberty to jump, the two skinny,
vertical red lines to get past the margin.

Perhaps a better milieu, a hill looking out
on an open field of poppies or high corn,
sitting under an oak stretching toward the sun,
acorns falling, and white clouds,
moving steadily across blue velvet.

Or the deck of a ship at night,
the middle of the ocean, stars,
sparkling white dots on endless,
black night, above grey waves,
moving infinitely to the horizon.

More unconstrained, maybe even large,
flowing font, or freewheeling cursive,
but still and all, miniscule,
meaningless, same block,
same as in the office.

My intense intents indent the bubbles
of possibles, at times a severe pop
reports a part of the future is dropped,
or its dilatory delivery
retreats with reproach from my untimely
approach, hissing away escapadely.

Poems are hard to create
they live, then die, walk alone in tears,
resurrect in family mausoleums.
They walk with you alone in ghostly patterns,
memories they deliver feeling unexpectedly
through the open windows of strangers.
Silk roses lie in a potted bowl
memories seven days before Mother’s Day.
Soak those tears, patience is the poetry of love.
Plant your memories, your seeds, your passion,
once a year, maybe twice.
Jesus knows we all need more
then a vase filled with silk flowers,
poems on paper from a poet sacred,
the mystery, the love of a caretaker−
multicolored silk flowers in a basket
handed out by the flower girl.

~~~

Listen to the poet read his own work:

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You can also listen to musician Dale Adams performing the poem:

and I pocket the little rays in my gurney
while they perform sonic echoes of my heart
and the lines rise and fall and rise and fall.

There’s abnormalities banging around in my chest;
raccoons in the wall, feverously knocking, then
pausing, waiting for me to catch another breath.

But my partner sings through tears, her hazel eyes
a constant throughout these tumultuous times spent
monopolizing my care from hospital to hospital around

the Greater Boston area. If Uber rides could talk
they would erupt with chimes of laughter
through failed insulin pods, windmilling, blurring together

like the irregularities the cardiologists just can’t pin down.
But my partner takes my hands and draws circles in my palm;
circle after circle after circle; my partner and I in a dance,

tranced, a constant looping in an open field in rural Georgia,
against the amber sky. When these constant visits
become yearly, I take the smile she offers, and memorize the lines

0+1, 1+1, 1+2, ad infinitum.
5 is where my understanding fades. Ah, Fibonacci,
I wear sequins when I try to make sense
of your sequences; nautilus shells and horny rabbits.

Mona Lisa and the recipe for Mr. Coffee—
1-2 tablespoons of Bustelo for every 6 ounces of water
are based on your formulae. When I eat spanakopita at the Nautilus
Diner, I devour your golden triangle.

You would think my favorite number would be 55,
but it is 69, the number my sister and I shouted
at the dinner table even before we knew what it meant.

I don’t think our parents ever got it
or did it, I never did it, maybe half of it
nothing reciprocal.

My sister’s favorite number is zero
most of her friends are mathematicians
she asks the hard questions of zero:

Why is anything to the zero power, 1?
Why is zero over zero undefined?

I love your numbers, come on
Fibby walk along the beach with me
roll up your cuffs, gift me with shells,

count my hard ridges. You make my heart do algorithms
I grab your ass, a divine proportion.

“I know now what I can offer you that no one else can:
complete and utter dependence!”
– Homer Simpson

My hostess, home,
how often I’ve thought
of hemiparasitism
and passed.

Mistletoe can perform
photosynthesis if it wants,
but I work smarter than hard
and the name belies me.

I blame the haustorium.
It was so easy to grow into you
that I cannot now imagine
how I’d begin to grow out.

And what with the nutrients,
I couldn’t imagine wanting to.
I’m a blight, not a bulldozer.
Do you need all those branches?

I spare my leaves and berries
for others, never another.
Without you there’d be no me;
nothing for strangers to kiss under.

It’s all symbiosis anyway.
One needs what they need,
often need to be needed, like mistletoe
when it’s plucked then hung out of season.

As grass is flexible, a tree is tough:
thus each endures a normal season’s wind.
Another year, when one gale’s cruel enough
to fell a forest, lowly grasses bend;
tall, stubborn trees throb in magnificence
and fight, but fail. Stumps watch the grass spring back
and envy the benign resilience
they know, with all their might, they sorely lack.

I couldn’t help but try to reach the sky
where you, my angel, lived. I loved your breeze,
and shimmering in it, but was malcontent
with being walked upon like grass. So I
resisted and reached higher, and was rent,
just as a wicked wind will render trees.