风景: WIND IMAGE

The ox is on my tongue.

---Aeschylus, Agamemnon

Lights numb my foreign tongue:

ecstatic sound.

风, wind, embodies 景

image: a landscape

difficult to read.

Slow January

coldly unfurls another year

over the narrow trail, birds

flying north, geese cry

profound & the boulevard

with its low drumming

of ten thousands engines

crawling on the overheated

carcass of earth---antecedents

of birth and death,

languages of royal pilgrims

treading the sunken ground,

poignant songs

like smoke rising beyond the misty shore.

My vowels are prolonged

or turned depending on whose sorrow

keeps me awake.

Too much has escaped

from daily crossing.

I lie with one ear open

to the murmurs of wind,

the persuasive sound

of silence. Dis-

remembering those

who are gone, but still

reachable as we drink

from the same fountain

or listen to the same song.

I don’t know where

spirit lives. Old shoes

grow bigger each winter.

Like all lights, words

are late,

more dead than the dead---

风 takes the fallen leaves home.

A landscape

difficult to read:

Towers torn down.

Towers erected.

Rooster on the threshold

snow bound.

:january '05