Читать книгу RENDANG - Will Harris - Страница 10

State-Building

Break a vase, says Derek Walcott, and the love

that reassembles the fragments will be stronger than

that love which took its symmetry for granted.

When I read this, I can only think who broke it?

In the British Museum, two black ‘figures’

(they don’t say slaves) beat olives from a tree;

a ‘naked youth’ stoops to gather the fallen

fruit. The freeborn men elsewhere, safe behind

their porticos, argue about the world’s

true form, or talk of bee glue, used

to seal the hive against attack, later called

propolis, meaning that it has to come

before – is crucial for – the building of a state.

*

Here it’s summer and bees groan inside

the carcass of a split bin bag. A figure passes,

is close to passed, when I see her face, half

shadow, marked with sweat or tears, the folds

beneath each downcast eye the same light

brown as – oceans off – my grandma. Mak.

Give me a love that’s unassimilated, sharp

as broken pots. That can’t be taken; granted.

My dad would work among the blue and white

pieces of a Ming vase – his job to get it

passable. He’d gather every bit and after days

assembling, filling in (putty, spit, glue),

draw forth – not sweetness – something new.