Читать книгу The Glass Constellation - Arthur Sze - Страница 33

Père Lachaise: breaking bread on a green bench

under chestnut trees as rain drizzles down the leaves

and smoke rises out of the crematorium chimney—

is recollection a form of memento mori?

I see papyrus growing in a copper tub in the bedroom;

your hands rub blackthorn oil into my skin.

I close my eyes, feel the warmth of straw-flecked adobe walls—

a white chrysanthemum opens in a cup of boiling water.

Willow leaves on the skylight cast onto an ochre wall

shadows resembling herring under a float house.

Is recollection a form of epistemological inquiry?

I am cradling you as you lean back into me,

flecks of white sand in your hair and on your eyelids.

I am holding you in a white dune as the moon rises,

as white sand begins to touch the bottom of an hourglass.