Читать книгу The Glass Constellation - Arthur Sze - Страница 14

Pin a mourning cloak to a board and observe

brown in the wings spreading out to a series

of blue circles along a cream-yellow outer band.

A retired oceanographer remembers his father

acted as a double agent during the Japanese occupation,

but the Guomindang general who promised a pardon

was assassinated; his father was later sentenced

as a collaborator to life in prison, where he died.

Drinking snake blood and eating deer antler

is no guarantee the mind will deepen and glow.

You notice three of the four corners of an intersection

are marked by ginkgo, horse chestnut, cluster

of pear trees, and wonder what the significance is.

Is the motion of a red-dye droplet descending

in clear water the ineluctable motion of a life?

The melting point of ice is a point of transparency,

as is a kiss, or a leaf beginning to redden,

or below a thunderhead lines of rain vanishing in air.