Translated by Brian Holton
rot holds the long rows of this great ship of stone
rot holds your footstep my footstep
walking the toppled waste where the Admiral gazes down upon the water
marble window frames door lintels elaborately carved
the oil paint of the sky soaks the ebb and flow of tides under the bridge’s parapet
young girls’ eyes sparkle on the decks
never afraid to wave good-bye poems of setting sail poems of dreaming
we pass through time like swallows startled by the bells
walk the inverted rotted underwater forest
a thousand years of tamping
a stinking deep black growth ring holds the palette of the waves
smearing your portrait my portrait
a rotted portrait is invisible yet like roots
it grows day after day poking at the sea’s black-and-blue wound
from deposits of sludge rise pearls and dead bones
in the sound of colored glass violins
a row of dead sailors locked into the struggle to keep paddling
in ship’s holds flooded with brilliant sunshine
gold always pornographic enough
to make humans dizzier than yesterday
walk narrow alleys where water can’t turn back
hear seabirds cackle like ghosts
howl like infants
rotting branches gently sway in the green waves
rotting fish embedded in the silver-bright seashells under walls
the water level climbs timber stakes climbs stone steps
like a curse locks a rusty wooden door
like a collapse another balcony dragged into black moonlight
bleached skeletons pull another balcony’s snow-white bones closer
in the pitch black moonlight sway shadows of people sway reflections in water
illusion is no metaphor
periscoping centuries pursue their own termination
you this instant I this instant
the little backyard jetty moored where flows a filthy river
tastes unloaded from our flesh spread out on the breeze
winged lions vacantly stare at the future
Copyright © 2018 Brian Holton. Used with permission of the author. This poem originally appeared in Kenyon Review, September/October 2018.