‘The Weight of a Sack of Rice’ and other poems

The Weight of a Sack of Rice

.     after Zhang Yimou’s film “To Live”

To arrive in a place that is ransacked of the quiet life,
the way lines on a face contort, an empty vase falls.
Obstinate years to unthread the hardened traces
of geography, to reconcile with the part of me
I did not understand then, that I accept as part of myself
now: the topology of destiny.

The frogs, too, unlamented, will one day go.
At times I have had to throw dice, whether I knew it, or liked it,
to move on. The mortgaged path,
the insensibilities of thirst. The clamour of history
to approve the power of streetlamps,
install minions in the shadow puppet theatre.

And all that time, a mountain stood there,
sometimes green, or illogical, and other times,
a mirror. Yet how often did I pass it,
and ignore it, a door shut.
The weight of a sack of rice, the guile in a way
of thinking, that things are this way,

or ought to be. The weight of wanting a quiet life,
when all is geese and sheep and ideology;
a canary in a cage, on the ledge of a kitchen window,
its wings clipped, voice going nowhere.
How many times did I see a bird, then name it, measure it, lose it,
lose myself.

Meditation

A woman reads, slowly, a page of a book,
shifts her eyeglass along the words she utters.
Outside her window, a walnut tree
draped in moonlight, a rook shuffling in a nest;
it takes only one leaf, a faint wing,

to open a door. When a stone is sun-warmed,
a cat comes out of its retreat,
sprawls in imperturbable silence.
A trowel is wedged, forgotten, in soil.
Night takes it all; this is one way to begin again.

As is to sleep, or become still,
the surface of a lake on a windless noon.
In hunger, a coot dips into water,
takes seagrass into its bill, emerges.
To drop anchor is not enough; it is separate

from the hand that releases it.
The woman reads into lateness,
understands that a tree resides in a time
longer than hers, that it reaches deep
into earth when it is thirsty, longing.

It Doesn’t Matter. The Moon is the Moon

The dilemma of a night cat: to sidle along stones,
or slip into the cleft of a fallen garage. It is winter:
a large pumpkin on a roof, torn moss in the gutter.
You are unaffable; I nod, hesitantly acknowledge.
In the garden, a wire fence, its lines indubitable.
Yellowing grass, spring onions, rotting tomato vines.
The low sun does not dry the ploughed earth.
You speak another language; it doesn’t matter
that I do not understand it. We both know that the moon
is the moon, that a wedding song – drums, a horn –
in an empty lot, is a lure. A jackdaw sways
over an autumn tree, fades in the evening light.
In the morning, the garage roof is covered in snow.

An Owl Not on the Branch of a Tree

A statue of an owl on a shelf, its body stout,
assured; still, it has no loose feathers,
no deep-rooted presence. Even if I never see
another owl again, I know that the figure,
eloquent, almost alive, is not an owl:

it does not dwell in owlness. It is a finger pointing
to the moon, it is the moon on water,
the two owls I once saw on a winter branch
as I passed by on a fast-moving train,
the owl I have never seen.

The owl, separated from its nook,
its wholeness breathing form into being – feathers,
beak, posture, alertness –
has been hidden in signifiers, photographs,
aviaries.

Alluring, yet not fully seen, the owl –
not observed as a bird, an animal,
a winged flutter onto a scurry in the night grass –
is lost. A brokenness,
unable to place before itself, its self.