The Cat and The Butterflies

I sit in the yard and watch
My cat chasing butterflies.

I admire his technique.
I hope they get away.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

The Open Road

No more shall I be tempted
By the welcoming road.

He who has no door
Cannot leave it open.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

The Friendship of Strangers

Brief as a storm is the friendship of strangers
Just two days since we first met

Yet the sound of laughter flooding my house
Makes me forget the rain outside.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Home is where the hatred is

privacy of self-
righteousness

the need to be/long

these are the songs
you were born to

battle lines drawn
in the powdered cocaine

white as the snow
on TV

a frenzy contained
disconnection

you claim
for your own

home

more a direction
than a state

an addiction
to hate

you run away from
come back to

refrain

***

Where does it stop?

Knock Knock.
Who’s there?

Opportunity.
Or the cops.

You think this is a joke?

this is your mouth talking smack
these are your words up in smoke

this is the man at the door
come to repossess your pride

this is the voice you keep inside

this is the rainbow of no choice
on a blood-slicked street

this is the sound of your feet
in the neighborhood of soul

the sound of defeat

the sound of illegal heartbeats
brought and sold
on every street corner

this is the dream of honor
deferred

of violence betrayed

in words
in breath

the instruments we have left
uniting to say

the day of your death
was a black Black day.


R.I.P. Gil Scott-Heron

Links:

the song this post takes its title from
NY Times obit
New Yorker profile

Awaiting the storm

Having touched the great river with my fingertips
I am ready to offer my hands to the rain

The wind blows from the North tonight
And the forest is full of empty gestures.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

The Crane

Reflection of crane standing
On one foot in the water

The silence between us
I cannot describe.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Dawn

The rooster in my courtyard
Claims the sun for his own.

Far away the snowcapped peaks
Blush to be discovered

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Rejection

You said you were sorry
Your words as soft

As the last snow falling
On the first cherry blossoms.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

The Unseen Mountain

Who questions the mountain's presence
Hidden away behind the clouds?

Let others speak of faith and doubt
I am silent with sincerity.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

The Cuckoo

All day a cuckoo across the valley
Repeats its foolish hope.

Until we leave off talk and listen
As though in answer.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Singing on the lake strand

The waves make a music so subtle
Only the stones can hear

I feared my songs didn't move you
Until I saw you wink.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Shadows

I sit in the white cloud's shadow
It passes and I know
The wind is blowing.

I sit in the mountain's shadow
It passes and I know
The sun has shifted.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

The Spiral Way

Searching for the peak
I advance in circles

Like a knife peeling
The skin of a fruit.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

The Crow

There are those who keep orioles in well-wrought cages
I have only this crow I feed when I can

She comes and goes through my open window
Bringing twigs and dead morsels, sometimes a leaf.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Rowing Across

A man with two oars chooses no sides,
Keeps his balance, travels fast.

A man with only one pays attention
To the currents, struggles to find his way.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Winter Song

Fledgling snow in the nightingale's nest
And the sky aches with ten thousand stars.

Sometimes, when the night is still
I hear, far away, the gibbons calling.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

The Last Watch

I too have lain awake at night
And heard the watchman calling the hours.

I too have woken to an unlocked door
Grateful for all the thief left behind.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Old Man's Winter Night

I am too old to throw stones at the moon
But sometimes, when the night is dark
I will step out, and raise my lantern
High above my face as if to seek the stars.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Well

Emptying a jar of clear water
I disturb the tranquil well.

How can I tell the peace I feel
And not break into words?

- Hu Ming-Xiang

The Lazy Shepherd

Others may chase their flocks all day
Pen them at night for fear of thieves.

I tie the river to me with a thread
Watch the moon chasing the clouds.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Spring Landscape

White clouds and mountains look down
On the day so young beneath them.

Between perfect stillness and pure motion
The wanderer passes restlessly.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Thaw

No floods this year. Just the snow giving way
Little by little, and darkness every day delayed.

I got drunk so slowly I didn't notice
When my words to you stopped making sense.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Flute Music

Thrown into the river, these crumpled pages
Unfurl and blossom at the water's touch.
Someone plays a flute in the village
The music stirs memories of you.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

A Passing Wave

Who stops to mourn the passing wave?
I have traveled far just to see the shore.
Now the tide fails beyond my reach
At the sight of sunset my heart breaks.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Chrysanthemums

Long did I mourn the death of chrysanthemums
Till my mouth grew fond of the taste.
The more I vow to harm only myself
The more I escape into the hurt of others.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Prose by any other name

Since I'm entirely incapable of resisting a challenge like this:

The Iliac
Homer's epic poem about his pelvis.

O Hello
Well met in Cyprus

The Canterbury Ales
Straight, no Chaucer

Deowulf
Long-lasting protection

McBeth
The bloodiest burger of them all

Midsummer Night's Ream
Printing documents at the last minute

Sensex and Sensibility
The intuitive way to play the stock market

Sensei and Sensibility
The True Story of Jane Austen's Japanese Lover

The Origin of the Spicies
The Evolution of Indian and Mexican food

Homeo and Juliet
The Capulet Guide to Alternate Medicine

Song of My Shelf
Whitman's book collection

Sub Liners
Wrapping sandwiches the Irish way

Olive Twist
Please, bartender, can I have some more martinis?

Bing and Nothingness
Existential Search

Bleak Hose
Underwear in the Victorian age

Oedipus T. Rex
Incest in the Jurassic age

Far from the Madding Crow
Critical Essays on Poe's Raven

Abslalom! Abslalom!
Winter Sports in Yoknapatawpha County

Clitemnestra
Finding happiness while your man's away at war

Rabbi, Run
Jewish anxiety in the suburbs

Trackstatus Logico-Philosophicus
The contents are everything that's in the Fed-Ex case

Wealth of Notions
Some ideas about the Economy

Dude the Obscure
The Lesser Known Lebowski

For the Union Dad
What to do when your wife's in Labor.

Jane Byre
What does he see in that stupid cow?

The Grapes of Wraith
The Vineyards of Angmar

Bardot Thodol
The Tibetan Book of Hot French Actresses

Get Anjali
How to score with the girl next door

The Weaves
Threads of Consciousness

Rumayana
The Holy Book of Old Monks

Update (a few more):

Sorrows of Young Weather
The Stormy Passions of Youth

Lorna Dune
Romance on Arrakis

The Dino Elegies
Every raptor is terrifying

The Cattle
Josef K. Cowboy

Rime of the Ancient Marinara
Pasta, pasta everywhere

King Solomon's Mine
Confessions of the Queen of Sheba

The Odds
Horace, Bookmaker

Ajar
The insanity of leaving doors open

Prancing Horses

Others have praised the hundred horses
Dancing as one in the public square
Sweeter to me is the leap of a deer
Escaping, on impulse, he knows not what.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Autumn

No more flowers
And the bells of the village
Hang silent in the wind.

I fill my desk
With blank pages, refusing
To light a fire.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

My Silence

The highest mountain gathers the most snow
The deepest river flows most slowly.
I have thought about these words so long
I cannot tell my shadow from silence.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

The Last Raindrop

How long it took to gather
The strength to fall
One brief moment of radiance
And a touch you hardly feel.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

The Storm

Birds singing into the wind
Too drenched to fly
A thousand fingers of rain
Pressed to your window.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Spring

Rainbows shimmer and die
On the dragonfly's wing.
My heart is too fragile
For the colors you bring.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

A Conversation

Drinking together, just the one cup between us,
The wine soon tasted of both our mouths,
Back and forth so often I could not tell
If the wine made me drunk, or your words.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Spring Sickness

Like one who, recovering from sickness, feels
His fever returning with each new ache
I stop to stare at each new flower, imagining
The Spring is a symptom of you.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

My Master's Horses

Praise to my master whose horses run
As swiftly now as when they were wild!
Running so swift over long distances
Carrying the weary weight of a man.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Untraced Thoughts

Moonlight through a cobweb
Makes a perfect shadow.
I wish that I could trace
My feelings into words.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

The caterpillar on the leaf

In the season of
Butterflies no one mourns the
Lost caterpillars.

The Burst Plums

Unheard the ripened plums
Fell to the earth last night.
I must wash away these stains
Before my mistress wakes.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Pessimism's Ghost

It takes a particular kind of despair
To see the glass half emptied of air.

Night and Day

Proudly the sun sets!
To the bird flying home
The cry of her fledglings
Seems like a song.

Shyly the moon rises!
To the lover in the woods
The song of the nightingale
Sounds like weeping.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Echo

I stand on the mountain
And the valley calls out to me
My voice when I shout
Echoing its loneliness.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

The Ends of the Road

Every stop on the road is someone's destination.
Other paths lie before us, other travelers come behind.

If the road ended tomorrow we would walk into the desert
Seeking a new horizon, distance our only guide.

Letting the wind erase our footprints so no one would follow
So anyone who came after would think we'd arrived.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

The limit to martyrdom

...is the cruelty of the human imagination.

There is a saint for every torture the pious mind can conceive.

Vague Memories

Flames chuckle over
The memory of lost forests
Old men around a fire
Speaking of love.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

A Gentle Luxury

The shapes I saw in the clouds once
Vanish in a puff of breeze
White petals afloat on the water
Proving my loss too light.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

The Lantern

Beauty does not demand attention
The wise have little need for speech.
Light shines from the glowing lantern
The paper does not catch on fire.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Devotion

Just got back from a theater / dance performance by Sarah Michelson / Richard Maxwell which asks the important moral question: what if God is a sadistic personal trainer and life just an endless series of high energy aerobics (to overly loud music) whose only purpose is to see how long it takes you to collapse of exhaustion?

The shame of it is that Maxwell's text for the performance is really quite beautiful - witty, moving and profound - which only serves to highlight how wooden and uninspired the choreography that goes with it really is.

Possibly Untrue

It is impossible to believe in impossibility.

What we call impossible is only what we believe to be always untrue. Just as when we speak of infinity we mean a number too big to count.

The Watermelon

All through the Spring it grew
Secretly, staying close to the ground.
Today you carved it open
Ate the red flesh, spat out the seeds.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

After the Fire

The butterflies have vanished mistaking
The falling ash for snow
In the burnt ruins of our garden
Embers glow like roses.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Ripple

The wind turns away with a sigh
Knowing its words weigh little
The leaf tongues the water
A thousand kisses ripple out.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

The guilty flowers

How proud the flowers awaiting execution
Prisoners unashamed of their crimes
Who among us will hold his head so high
When the winter is finally done?

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Ghost

When you came from the river your hair was still wet
And I watched it dry in the summer breeze
Watched as each strand came slowly undone
Unable to keep the shape to which it clung.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Consolation

The wanderer's home is just over the horizon
Or so he must believe.
Tell me there is no end to suffering
So I may find relief.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Bhimsen

R.I.P. Bhimsen Joshi (1922-2011)


When you sang the Malhar
we could hear the trees growing,
hear the wood’s ancient
longing for rain,

your voice a season
exquisite with languor,
wild thunders tamed
to the purposes of song.

The night you sang Vande Mataram
we wanted to sing along,
your voice on the loudspeakers
flattened, distorted,

yet deep enough to contain
all our contradictions:
fifty years of freedom
and a tradition

older than grief.
That’s why I have to believe
you will outlast this pyre,
your throat an ember

burning pure and blue,
a constant outpouring,
at the center of the fire, a flame
endlessly wavering, endlessly true.

Remembrance

prayer, heartbreak, memory

future, present, past

all the ways to mourn

pray, love, remember

You

The Open Window

Who is it reaches in through my window
A thief, or the moon?
Let the winds cover my room with dust
I hear the cicadas singing.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Better off

Returning from the war, you said nothing
And I, who had waited, felt betrayed.
Until I remembered my far-off sister
Who got back nothing but the news.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Magpies

One by one the birds have taken
Slivers of straw from the scarecrow's breast.
Here I am left alone forsaken
And you far away in your well-lined nest.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Regret

You want me to tell you this is not the way out.

It isn't. But only because I never you let in.

You want me to tell you it is not time yet. And it isn't. It's tomorrow. Or the day before.

A speck of sand. A pinch of dust. A grain of ash. A mote of salt. Something sticks in the hourglass' throat.

You spend time like money, as though you could earn more if you needed it.

I have a bag full of stolen moments. I will sell them to you for a song.

A Beginning

My master has gone to fetch his new bride
I shall strew his bed with fresh-plucked flowers.
Let others warm themselves at the fire
I shall find beauty in the raked ash.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Catullus 101

Multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus
advenio has miseras, frater, ad inferias,
ut te postremo donarem munere mortis
et mutam nequiquam alloquerer cinerem.
Quandoquidem fortuna mihi tete abstulit ipsum.
Heu miser indigne frater adempte mihi,
nunc tamen interea haec, prisco quae more parentum
tradita sunt tristi munere ad inferias,
accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu,
atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale.

- Catullus


Crossing many nations and many seas
I arrive bereft, brother, at your grave's edge
To formally repay the last of death's duties
And question, in vain, the mute dust.
Now that fortune has torn you away from me -
Oh pitiful brother snatched too soon from me -
What else now but to perform these ancient customs
Handed down from dead to living, rites of distress,
Offerings you must accept, soaked in a brother's tears
And so forever, brother, hail and farewell.

[The translation is mine, though it draws heavily on the notes in Anne Carson's Nox (I don't read Latin) and is probably best thought of as a variation on the original rather than an accurate rendition. You can find a more accurate translation here.]

Nox

Not an event but an unfolding. Not a death but a life.

The accordions of grief swell and subside. Music, like breath, does not come easily. Mourning is memory turning in on itself. Turning its back on History.

Faces remembered in the turning away.

Fragments of old injuries combine to make an ache. You seek the current beneath the surface, the blue beneath the bruise. The blush of first blood, reconstructed, re-construed.

Repent means "the pain again".

These are the rites by which we translate thoughts to language, the dead to the lost. Poems, like funerals, customary but incomplete, render meanings from absence, end in surrender.

The elegy like a tree growing in a graveyard, uncertain of where to point. Bare lines containing nothing. Buried roots.

The truth about feelings. Feelings about the truth.

[after reading Anne Carson's latest, from which the line in italics is taken]

People Play

The childhood we want to return to is not the same as the childhood we are trying to escape from.

That is the meaning of all our games.

This miserable man longs for a company of actors, an epic tragedy, something that will lend weight to the lightness of his disquiet.

The light of these words to explain the nameless shadows. Even if it means distorting their shapes.

Christmas Music

If you live in North America, you've spent the last month or more being bombarded by kitschy muzak in the name of Christmas . So now that the night has finally arrived, I figured the best way to celebrate would be with real music: the coming together of one greatest songwriter of all time with one of the last century's most glorious voices:



Merry Christmas, Everyone.

On the Road

I walk away from the processions of others
Seeking the abandoned places where it all began
Like a man who stands outside his lover's house
Trying to recall that first feeling.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Our loss...

...is heaven's gain.

R.I.P. Blake Edwards

Wanderer: Twilight

I travel from horizon to horizon
Seeking a sky that will accept my night.
But the sun refuses me wherever I go
And the songs of the orioles mock me.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Slapstick Eden

What if the first fruit was a banana, and Eve left the peel lying around?

And what if God, walking by, slipped on the peel and fell, and being unable to admit that the fall was anything but deliberate, has been forced to act like a clown ever since?

Thanksgiving 2010

And this above all
I've come to be thankful for
The ungrateful world.

Battlefield Song

Who comes to the battlefield to hear the bones singing?
Tomorrow the birds bear these songs to our wives.
Long are the roads that we left at their doorsteps
And faded the horizons, like our goodbyes.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Hope

The seed you planted has refused to sprout. All you have to show for two years of labor is a blank piece of earth, a fertile absence, the ground, diligently watered, turning to mud.

Desperate to know where it all went wrong, you bring a trowel, start to delve. You dig and dig, but all you find is pebbles. Was that the cause? Did you plant stones and dream of growing mountains?

You sow matches in the wind, wait for the sun to come up.

You run frantic with grief. You are in such a hurry to get away you forget to wash your hands.

Twenty years later, in a foreign country, you open your wrinkled palms to the rain, and the smell of home blossoms under your nose.

Revenge

The juggler is in the marketplace, calling for the knives of murderers, knives that have been used to kill.

One by one they approach him, running quickly out of the shadows and retreating before they can be recognized. Grizzled old men whose hands have lost their blood lust, shy children too innocent to know what they offer, abandoned wives reluctant to let go of that last keepsake, however tainted its past. And who's to say one of these shadowy figures is not in fact a shade, the knife like a flower plucked straight out of its wound?

And the knives! Straight and curved, long and slight, a Babel of blades proving murder multilingual, there being as many ways to kill a man as there are races or creeds. Yet look how easily each knife he receives is added to the act, the steel flashing as it is tossed into the air, taking its place among its brethren in a circuit that grows ever higher, ever more elaborate, until it is difficult to believe that all this is the work of two lone hands.

Then you realize it isn't. At some point the juggler must have passed a knife to another, because they are going back and forth through the crowd now, the blades flickering in the air above you like so many metal dolphins leaping out of the sea. And you are amazed at how many accomplices the juggler has, until you notice that you too are a part of it, and you watch entranced as your fingers reach up and pluck a naked blade out of the air, only to throw it back a second later, catch and release, catch and release, and you feel exhilarated because you are no juggler, because you never dreamed you had this in you, and because you are proud to be part of this, whatever this is, the provenance of the knives already forgotten, mere arcs of steel connecting person to person, hand to hand.

What happens when the show is over? Will he be able to catch them all?

Last Rites

The crop in the field is burnt.
The cricket sings under my bed.
I have filled the buckets with water
And wait for the moon to come.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Intimacy

Not who we dance with, but what we dance around.

Not closeness, but distance made aware of itself. The heartbeat in the next room, eyes meeting in the crowd.

Turn it inside out and every emptiness is an ache. Angles of expectation add up to desire.

We must return to the old savageries. You bring the broken dances, my love. I'll bring the fire.

***

Just returned from watching a performance by the Zenon Dance Company, the highlight of which was the premiere of luciana achugar's glorious Structures of Feeling, but which also included a mesmerizing performance of a 1992 piece by Susana Tambutti called Like An Octopus - a sort of deconstruction of the tango that is also the inspiration for this post.

Landscape

There is a man with a bag full of ashes. There is a man with a bag full of crumbs.

There is a third man with a pocketful of seeds.

There is a bird that could be either a dove or a pigeon, but which believes it is a phoenix and opens its wings to the dawn light.

There is a tree going over its branches, reviewing the blueprint of its choices to see where the sky went wrong.

There is a sliver of ice on your doorstep instead of a newspaper. The war has hardened and shows no sign of melting.

There is a siren instead of a song.

An Offering

The sun has traveled a long distance
To lay its bones upon this grave.
I too have nothing but my embrace
To offer the indifferent earth.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

The difference between Blogger and Facebook

is that Blogger is based on the assumption that if what you do or say is interesting, people will like you; and Facebook is based on the assumption that if people like you they will find what you do or say interesting.

***

Reading Zadie Smith's piece on Facebook in the NYRB (on which I may have more to say later), I'm struck again by how much more brilliant Smith is as an essayist than as a novelist.

And I say this as someone who quite enjoys her novels.

Stones

To build a house lay one stone on another.
To make a road just lay them side by side.
For some shall live together as lovers
While others must walk away as friends.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

The stupid gardener

plants too many seeds.

No one really needs
a thousand flowers

no matter how sincere
their devotion to the sun;

haphazard as explosions
that do no damage

they are acts of pure sentiment
or failed attempts at speech,

predictable products of their season
and species

that a more discerning hand
would swiftly prune.

It takes a special kind
of stubbornness

to let them all bloom,
to bask content

in these riches
of embarrassment,

each awkward bud granted
its broken ground,

its mouth of air.

A special kind of madness to plant
flowers everywhere,

knowing that one or two
are all that will bear

fruit, all that will last;
to know the futility of the task,

and care enough
not to care.


R.I.P. P. Lal

Day Break

The stars are fading, the shadows almost broken
The window is pale with a distant light.
Disarmed by beauty, I make the moon my shield
Seeking reflections in the twice-touched water.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Soundtracks

[with thanks to km, who recommended this]

The first thing you hear when you enter Heaven is Ode to Joy. Note after triumphant note, the music announces the final victory of brotherhood, the end of all despair. Beethoven himself, his hearing restored, stands on the dais, conducting an orchestra of angels dressed in dazzling white. Your heart soars. You march towards the ivory gate holding your head straight and your shoulders high, proud to be part of this immortal company, to have joined, through long hardship, the ranks of the blessed.

It is only when you get closer that you notice the circles under the composer's eyes. He looks haunted, worn. He motions desultorily with his baton, secure in the knowledge that the angels will play the piece perfectly even if he directs them wrong.

And you begin to imagine what it must be like for him: the greatest composer in history, the man who changed music forever, author of masterpiece after masterpiece, each angrier and more sublime than the last; and to be rewarded for that lifetime of furious perfection with this job as a glorified organ-monkey, conducting the same piece over and over, on endless repeat.

***

The first thing you hear when you enter Hell is Mozart's Dies Irae. And there he is himself, long hair flying, feet strutting like a rock-star's, smile leery with mischief, Wolfgang Amadeus and his orchestra of demons, volcanoes blazing behind him, winged monsters screeching through the air.

The music like a hammer-blow of judgment, beating you down.

Only there is something different about this piece. It sounds not wrong exactly, but a little strange. Is that a phrase from Don Giovanni? And surely that drumming comes from Sabbath? You look again at the orchestra and realize the players are sweating, struggling to keep up. Mozart is wrong-footing them, twisting the music in mid-air, whimsically changing the score on the sheets even as they are playing it. And it begins to dawn on you that this is not the Dies Irae you listened to on Earth. This is something altogether more unexpected, altogether more treacherous. In the centuries that he has been here, Mozart has subjected his score to a thousand variations, twisted and turned it a million different ways. What remains is an organic labyrinth of music, an endless architecture of harmonies only his agile mind can find its way through.

The music stops. Mozart's face lights up with an impish grin. His eye gleams. He waits just long enough for the orchestra to get their tired breath back, then launches into a furious new allegro. The music is loud, almost overwhelming, but as you pass by the dais you can faintly hear the sound of the maestro humming to himself.

Yes, it's all just an act

That's what you want to hear, isn't it?

What else do I have to say before you'll pretend to believe me?

What confessions do I have to make to consider myself forgiven?

Journey's end in lover's meeting

Do not imagine that the river has slept
though it blink in its bed in the morning light.
Don't think your absence has gone unnoticed
though we meet as friends who were never apart.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

In that case, what's the question?

If you have to ask
let's pretend there's a Question
we both answer to.

IT'S TIME

Final prophecy:
a man staring into the
bottom of his glass.

Serenity lost

Like a child chasing a firefly
too deep into the forest
I turn, imagining a glimpse of you,
and find myself lost.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Theology

"What if there's no God?"

"What?"

"What if there's no God?"

"What made you think of that now?"

"I didn't."

"But you just said..."

"I mean I didn't think of it just now. It's something I've often thought about."

"Often?"

"Off and on."

"And you were thinking about it again?"

"Yes."

"Here? Now?"

"Sure. Don't you ever just lie in bed and daydream?"

"Not about God."

"What do you daydream about then?"

"I don't know. Parties. Vacations. Winning the lottery."

"Well, think of it as a vacation from God."

"Or like unwinning the lottery."

"Exactly."

"And that's really what you want to talk about?"

"Yes."

"I need some coffee."

"Oh, come on, it'll be fun."

"All right then. My Vacation from God or What I did in my Summer Holidays."

"No, seriously."

"Seriously, I can't see that it would make much difference."

"To you?"

"To us. To people like us."

"People like us?"

"People who don't matter."

"To whom?"

"To anyone."

"You matter to me."

"Thank you. You matter to me too. But that doesn't matter. Because we're both nobodies, you see. We're a solipsism. We cancel out."

"And God?"

"God doesn't come into it because even if he"

"or she"

"even if he or she did exist, he or she wouldn't bother with people like us."

"Non-people like us."

"Exactly. We're like the leaves in the forest no one notices because they're too busy listening for a tree to fall."

"And God is the wind."

"Exactly"

"God is a crazy drunk hurricane uprooting all the trees."

"Or sowing them in new places."

"But if God is the wind then he's whirling us about too."

"No, we're just caught up in him."

"Same thing."

"Not at all."

"You're saying God doesn't pay attention to us."

"Yes."

"Because he's focused on the trees."

"Yes."

"But what about him"

"or her"

"being omniscient? Watching the sparrow fall and all that?"

"Look, my GPS knows where I am all the time. That doesn't mean it cares."

"You're saying God watches us but doesn't care."

"If there is a God, yes."

"Wouldn't lift a finger?"

"No."

"But maybe he"

"or she"

"cares about all things equally?"

"He or she would have to be pretty stupid to do that."

"Fair enough. You're quite the cynic aren't you?"

"What can I say? It's a cynical forest. And I haven't had any coffee."

"A cynical forest in which we're all leaves and there may be a wind or there may not be but either way there's no escaping gravity."

"More like there's nothing to escape for."

"What about the afterlife?"

"What about it?"

"If there is a God, then there could be an afterlife. That'd be something worth escaping for."

"Why? We'd only be more insignificant."

"We would?"

"Stands to reason. We'd have a whole history of somebodies piled on top of us."

"We'd be the bottom of the heap."

"Exactly. Bring on the bonfire."

"But what if we weren't nobodies."

"But we are."

"How do you know? Maybe unknown to you you're really a somebody."

"I'm a poet and I don't know it."

"What if you're God?"

"What if I'm God and I don't exist?"

"What if you're God and you do exist?"

"Then I'd say Let there be Coffee! And take the rest of the week off."

"What if there were no coffee?"

"Then I'd make some. I'm God, remember."

"What if there were no coffee and you weren't God, though God did exist?"

"What if there were God and no coffee?"

"Yes."

"I'd rather have it the other way round."

"But what if?"

"I suppose we would all sleep really, really soundly."

"Knowing God was watching over us?"

"Exactly."

"I don't know. Have you ever tried sleeping with someone watching over you?"

"I wouldn't know. I'd be asleep."

"I had a boyfriend who used to watch me while I slept. It creeped me out."

"So now I'm not God but your ex-boyfriend is?"

"No, I'm just saying. I don't know that having someone watch over you is as comforting as they make it sound."

"But it'd be different with God."

"Why?"

"I don't know. Maybe because you wouldn't feel so judged."

"Not judged? This is God we're talking about."

"Ya, well. Isn't God supposed to be all loving and shit. Like a mother."

"You obviously haven't met my mother."

"I don't particularly want to."

"Good."

"So you're saying if there is a God he's like a creepy ex-boyfriend."

"or girlfriend."

"or like a creepy ex-girlfriend?"

"Not ex-. A creepy boyfriend or girlfriend you can't break up with."

"Passive-aggressive."

"Co-dependent."

"Clingy."

"A good thing there isn't a God then."

"You're saying there isn't?"

"I hope not. Unless there's something you're not telling me? You're not in a relationship with God, are you?"

"And if I am?"

"I suppose we could just pretend he doesn't exist."

"And hope he's not omniscient."

"And hope he's not omnipotent. I can't compete with that."

"You sure? You want to try?"

"I'm going to need some coffee first."

"Coffee? Really? That's what you're thinking about right now?"

"Hey, you were thinking about God!"

"We're both going to hell, aren't we?"

"Only if there is a God."

"What if there isn't?"

"Then I'd say we've got it pretty sweet."

"Amen."

Not Me Blues

Who wouldn't make a deal with the Devil
given half a chance?
I got a soul made out of paper
I'd sign away without a glance.

I got a thousand invitations
signed Opportunity
all offering consolation
'cos the Devil won't deal with me.

[sorry, Robert Johnson overdose]

Wooden Ships

A windless day, and still the boats
Are proudly holding up their sails.
This must be what it means to hope.
This must be how it feels to fail.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Distraction

As I grow older, it becomes increasingly difficult to tell the pretence of reading from reading itself, so that I begin to suspect that theree is a quality of attention I am no longer capable of, a willingness to be absorbed by the page that I no longer possess. As it is, I find myself glancing at my Blackberry every ten minutes, holding it's gaze for the two seconds necessary to ascertain if the light is blinking, the tiny wink that tells me I am wanted, that my attention is required, as it already is, elsewhere.

All the unfinished stories

"Once he wrote that a story wasn't finished
until every line he loved most was omitted.
Yes, but the human spirit cannot withstand such revision
& we write to undo the wrong we cannot alter in our lives."

- Philip Schultz 'Lines to a Jewish Cossack: For Isaac Babel'

Survivor

I never could decide whether she meant to kill me. The poisoned mushrooms may have been a mistake, after all. That's what I assumed they were, waking up in that hospital bed, being told how lucky I was to be alive. But then she didn't come to visit me for two days, and I began to wonder.

They told me on the third day. About the overdose. How she'd blamed herself for the poisoning, how she'd said she couldn't go on living without me. How they'd waited till I was strong enough for the news. And for weeks I felt miserable, guilty for doubting her. But then I thought, what if she had meant to kill me, and failed? What else could she have done or said? What better way to escape investigation, stay out of prison? And perhaps she thought I would follow her example, and she would have killed me another way?

The truth is, I didn't think I could live without her, but I have. Ten long, haunted years; haunted not by the memory of her, but by my own failure to reciprocate, alone with the possibility of being the one more loved. And who's to say it isn't the doubt that's kept me alive? The not-knowing whether I've outwitted her or betrayed her. A lifetime seeking answers to questions I dare not ask.

You say we're out of options

You say that the battle is over
Though the fighting hasn't even begun:
No one's stepped on the field, neither us nor the enemy,
No lines have formed, no flag
Has summoned scattered comrades
Or told of the enemy's location.
You say that the battle is over
Though we haven't even begun to fight.

You say we're out of options:
Our bodies are broken, our hands are weak,
We cannot bear the stone of injustice -
The stone of injustice, the mountain of grief -
One touch and we all stepped to one side
Matched words with words and were satisfied.

Friends, in the dust of the beloved's street
Shall our blood no longer shine?
Shall no gardens blossom crimson
In the dust at the beloved's feet?
Shall this mourning not be broken
by the returning cries of lovers
who demand their rights?
The slogans of those not afraid to die?

The tests that grief set us she set us,
The wounds we bore we bore.
There are more wounds owed yet,
More life and limb to be mourned,
More bitter tests to be borne.

- Faiz Ahmed Faiz (translation mine)

***

The original (for a reading, go here)

Tum ye kehte ho ab koi chaara nahin

Tum ye kehte ho vo jang ho bhi chuki
Jismen rakha nahin hai kisi ne kadam
Koi utraa na maidan mein dushman na hum
Koi saf ban na pai na koi aalam
Muntashir doston ko sadaa de saka
Ajnabi dushmanon ka pataa de saka
Tum ye kehte ho vo jang ho bhi chuki
Jismen rakha nahin humne ab tak kadam

Tum ye kehte ho ab koi chaara nahin
Jism khasta hai, hathon main yaara nahin

Apne bas ka nahin bar-e-sang-e-sitam
Bar-e-sang-e-sitam, bar-e-kuhsar-e-gam
Jisko chukar sabhi ek taraf ho gaye
Baat ki baat main zee-sharaf ho gaye
Doston ku-e-jaana ki nameherban
Khaak par apne roshan lahoo ki bahar
Ab na aayegi kya, ab khilega na kya
Is kaf-ey-nazneen par koi lalazar
Is hazin khamoshi main na loutega kya
Shor-e-aavaz-e-haq, naara-e-giro-daar
Shouk ka imtihan jo hua so hua
Jism-o-jaan ko ziyan jo hua so hua
Sood se peshtar hai ziyan aur bhi
Doston matam-jismo-jaan aur bhi
Aur bhi talakhtar imtihaan aur bhi

- Faiz Ahmed Faiz

After the War

After the war the flowers are all suspect
Escaping too easily from the bone-prisoned earth.
I pluck a soldier's heart to give to my love
No way of knowing whether friend or foe.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Beat Memories

Again and again in those final years he returned to a single image - the view from his kitchen window - squat East Village skyline, propellers of shrubbery, an open window flirting with the wind, and half a dozen droplets of rain shining on a clothesline, meaning nothing symbolic, you understand, no poetry as high wire act, placement of words on the taut line, points of focus making the scene come true, only the instinct of an old poet, his empathy for all that clings by a thread, familiar alchemy of shabbiness to sadness achieved by fragile means.

And all around that image the photographs of his friends from the old days - Burroughs, Corso, Kerouac - all that mad and generous generation, so easy in their young men's faces, so tired in their old, a gallery of portraits in impromptu glory, resplendent as drops on a clothesline, that hold, their fall inevitable, true to the light.

[Inspired by an exhibition of Ginsberg's photographs at the National Gallery of Art]

Update: Edmund White in the NYRB on the exhibition

On Beauty

You want to believe beauty can save you, but it can't.

You want to believe you can save beauty, hold on to it, preserve it, and you can, but you won't.

The only relation possible between you and beauty is the one between the mirror and the light: both suffer endlessly for the other, but neither can bear the other's touch.

Raindrop

A raindrop on an autumn leaf
Reminds me of all the ways
New beauty is vulnerable
And the hurt in her eyes.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

How would we know if time passed us by?

I smell the dust by the roadside.
I join the procession of ghosts.
Then the wind lifts like a summer veil
And the evening is empty again.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

The suspicion of beauty

...clings to every fragile thing.

Perhaps it is the hysteresis of suffering, that makes us helpless in the face of helplessness. Or a proactive nostalgia for what must soon be ruined.

Perhaps it is a dangerous sense of our own presence, like the wonder of a child watching the cobweb billow with his every breath.