I’m here, on the dark porch, restyled in my mother’s chair.
10:45 and no moon.
Below the house, car lights
Swing down, on the canyon floor, to the sea.

In this they resemble us,
Dropping like match flames through the great void
Under our feet.
In this they resemble her, burning and disappearing.

Everyone’s gone
And I’m here, sizing the dark, saving my mother’s seat.

19

This is the bird hour, peony blossoms falling bigger than wren hearts
On the cutting border's railroad ties,
Sparrows and other feathery things
Homing from one hedge to the next,
                                                    late May, gnat-floating evening.

Is love stronger than unlove?
                                         Only the unloved know.
And the mockingbird, whose heart is cloned and colorless.

And who's this tiny chirper,
                         lost in the loose leaves of the weeping cherry tree?
His song is not more than three feet off the ground, and singular,
And going nowhere.
Listen. It sounds a lot like you, hermano.
                                                           It sounds like me.

East of me, west of me, full summer.
How deeper than elsewhere the dusk is in your own yard.
Birds fly back and forth across the lawn
                                        looking for home
As night drifts up like a little boat.

Day after day, I become of less use to myself.
Like this mockingbird,
                      I flit from one thing to the next.
What do I have to look forward to at fifty-four?
Tomorrow is dark.
                 Day-after-tomorrow is darker still.

The sky dogs are whimpering.
Fireflies are dragging the hush of evening
                                         up from the damp grass.
Into the world's tumult, into the chaos of every day,
Go quietly, quietly.

^{translated from the Chinese by Ezra Pound}

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers 
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse, 
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums. 
And we went on living in the village of Chokan: 
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful. 
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall. 
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

At fifteen I stopped scowling, 
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours 
Forever and forever, and forever. 
Why should I climb the lookout?

At sixteen you departed, 
You went into far Ku-to-Yen, by the river of swirling eddies, 
And you have been gone five months. 
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead. 
You dragged your feet when you went out. 
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses, 
Too deep to clear them away! 
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind. 
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August 
Over the grass in the West garden, 
They hurt me. 
I grow older,
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you, 
                              As far as Cho-fu-Sa.

^{translated from the Japanese by William George Aston}

An ancient pond!
With a sound from the water
Of the frog as it plunges in.

I don’t like what the moon is supposed to do.
Confuse me, ovulate me,

spoon-feed me longing. A kind of ancient
date-rape drug. So I’ll howl at you, moon,

I’m angry. I’ll take back the night. Using me to
swoon at your questionable light,

you had me chasing you,
the world’s worst lover, over and over

hoping for a mirror, a whisper, insight.
But you disappear for nights on end

with all my erotic mysteries
and my entire unconscious mind.

How long do I try to get water from a stone?
It’s like having a bad boyfriend in a good band.

Better off alone. I’m going to write hard
and fast into you moon, face-fucking.

Something you wouldn’t understand.
You with no swampy sexual

promise but what we glue onto you.
That's not real. You have no begging

cunt. No panties ripped off and the crotch
sucked. No lacerating spasms

sending electrical sparks through the toes.
Stars have those.

What do you have? You’re a tool, moon.
Now, noon. There’s a hero.

The obvious sun, no bulls hit, the enemy
of poets and lovers, sleepers and creatures.

But my lovers have never been able to read
my mind. I’ve had to learn to be direct.

It’s hard to learn that, hard to do.
The sun is worth ten of you.

You don't hold a candle
to that complexity, that solid craze.

Like an animal carcass on the road at night,
picked at by crows,

haunting walkers and drivers. Your face
regularly sliced up by the moving

frames of car windows. Your light is drawn,
quartered, your dreams are stolen.

You change shape and turn away,
letting night solve all night’s problems alone.

Those canyons are too narrow to travel.
How will you make your way there, when

it’s a mere bird-path—a thousand miles
and gibbons howling all day and night?

We offer travel-spirits wine, then you’re
gone: Nü-lang Shrine, mountain forests

and beyond. But we still share a radiant
moon. And do you hear a nightjar there?

      I

Admitted to the hospital again.

The second bout of pneumocystis back

In January almost killed him; then,

He'd sworn to us he'd die at home.  He baked

Us cookies, which the student wouldn't eat,

Before he left--the kitchen on 5A

Is small, but serviceable and neat.

He told me stories: Richard Gere was gay

And sleeping with a friend if his, and AIDS

Was an elaborate conspiracy

Effected by the government.  He stayed

Four months. He lost his sight to CMV.

      II

One day, I drew his blood, and while I did

He laughed, and said I was his girlfriend now,

His blood-brother.  "Vampire-slut," he cried,

"You'll make me live forever!" Wrinkled brows

Were all I managed in reply.  I know

I'm drowning in his blood, his purple blood.

I filled my seven tubes; the warmth was slow

To leave them, pressed inside my palm.  I'm sad

Because he doesn't see my face.  Because

I can't identify with him.  I hate

The fact that he's my age, and that across

My skin he's there, my blood-brother, my mate.

      III

He said I was too nice, and after all

If Jodie Foster was a lesbian,

Then doctors could be queer.  Residual

Guilts tingled down my spine.  "OK, I'm done,"

I said as I withdrew the needle from

His back, and pressed.  The CSF was clear;

I never answered him.  That spot was framed

In sterile, paper drapes.  He was so near

Death, telling him seemed pointless.  Then, he died.

Unrecognizable to anyone

But me, he left my needles deep inside

His joking heart.  An autopsy was done.

      IV

I'd read to him at night. His horoscope,

The New York Times, The Advocate;

Some lines by Richard Howard gave us hope.

A quiet hospital is infinite,

The polished, ice-white floors, the darkened halls

That lead to almost anywhere, to death

Or ghostly, lighted Coke machines.  I call

To him one night, at home, asleep.  His breath,

I dreamed, had filled my lungs--his lips, my lips

Had touched.  I felt as though I'd touched a shrine.

Not disrespectfully, but in some lapse

Of concentration.  In a mirror shines

The distant moon.

While jogging on the treadmill at the gym,
that exercise in getting nowhere fast,
I realized we need a health pandemic.
Obesity writ large no more, Alzheimer's
forgotten, we could live carefree again.
We'd chant the painted shaman's sweaty oaths,
We'd kiss the awful relics of the saints,
we'd sip the bitter tea from twisted roots,
we'd listen to our grandmothers' advice.
We'd understand the moonlight's whispering.
We'd exercise by making love outside, 
and afterwards, while thinking only of
how much we'd lived in just one moment's time,
forgive ourselves for wanting something more:
to praise the memory of long-lost need,
or not to live forever in a world 
made painless by our incurable joy.

When we first met, my heart pounded. They said
the shock of it was probably what broke
his heart. In search of peace, we traveled once
to Finland, tasted reindeer heart. It seemed
so heartless, how you wanted it to end.
I noticed on the nurse who took his pulse
a heart tattooed above her collarbone.
The kids played hearts all night to pass the time.
You said that at its heart rejection was
impossible to understand. “We send
our heartfelt sympathy,” was written in
the card your mother sent, in flowing script.
I tried interpreting his EKG,
which looked like knife wounds to the heart. I knew
enough to guess he wouldn’t last much longer.
As if we’d learned our lines by heart, you said,
“I can’t explain.” “Please don’t,” was my reply.
They say the heart is just a muscle. Or
the heart is where the human soul resides.
I saw myself in you; you looked so much
like him. You didn’t have the heart to say
you didn’t want me anymore. I still
can see that plastic statue: Jesus Christ,
his sacred heart aflame, held out in his
own hands. He finally let go. How grief
this great is borne, not felt. Borne in the heart.

A lover whom duty called over the wave,
With himself communed: “Will my love be true
If left to herself? Had I better not sue
Some friend to watch over her, good and grave?
But my friend might fail in my need,” he said,
“And I return to find love dead.
Since friendships fade like the flow’rs of June,
I will leave her in charge of the stable moon.”

Then he said to the moon: “O dear old moon,
Who for years and years from thy throne above
Hast nurtured and guarded young lovers and love,
My heart has but come to its waiting June,
And the promise time of the budding vine;
Oh, guard thee well this love of mine.”
And he harked him then while all was still,
And the pale moon answered and said, ‘I will.’

And he sailed in his ship o’er many seas,
And he wandered wide o’er strange far strands:
in isles of the south and in Orient lands,
Where pestilence lurks in the breath of the breeze.
But his star was high, so he braved the main,
And sailed him blithely home again;
And with joy he bended his footsteps soon
To learn of his love from the matron moon.

She sat as of yore, in her olden place,
Serene as death, in her silver chair.
A white rose gleamed in her whiter hair,
And the tint of a blush was on her face.
At sight of the youth she sadly bowed
And hid her face ’neath a gracious cloud.
She faltered faint on the night’s dim marge,
But “How,” spoke the youth, “have you kept your charge?”

The moon was sad at a trust ill-kept;
The blush went out in her blanching cheek,
And her voice was timid and low and weak,
As she made her plea and sighed and wept.
“Oh, another prayed and another plead,
And I couldn’t resist,” she answering said;
“But love still grows in the hearts of men:
Go forth, dear youth, and love again.”

But he turned him away from her proffered grace.
“Thou art false, O moon, as the hearts of men,
I will not, will not love again.”
And he turned sheer ’round with a soul-sick face
To the sea, and cried: “Sea, curse the moon,
Who makes her vows and forgets so soon.”
And the awful sea with anger stirred,
And his breast heaved hard as he lay and heard.

And ever the moon wept down in rain,
And ever her sighs rose high in wind;
But the earth and sea were deaf and blind,
And she wept and sighed her griefs in vain.
And ever at night, when the storm is fierce,
The cries of a wraith through the thunders pierce;
And the waves strain their awful hands on high
To tear the false moon from the sky.