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