Of Li Qingzhao

To begin, she wrote of her own lips and hair,
her powders and pillows, gold pins,
silk screens, jade flute,
and a yearning whenever her love left
that changed into stasis and sorrow after his death
when desire so weighed and waited on grief,
she could not even slip into her skiff,
certain it would not move,
or into her garden where leaf and petal fell.

Twenty-five years with her husband-scholar,
collecting bronze horse, carved stone,
then he died during war and she fled
to where she would sit inside, hair uncombed,
an older Li Qing Zhao, bent over
a small table, composing in grey light
as sorrow entered to touch the few scrolls
not destroyed - about which she no longer writes —
her only subject now the sorrow that goes
shuffling about her room, as she waits
in an old robe, with brush and ink,
noting the rain that taps on the wutong trees,
the wild geese flying South, and, when her wine is gone,
her cup of bitter tea.


Pantoum: In China

Poems have grown out of misty groves
far from Emperors who forbid trees
in their city of red walls and yellow roofs,
any trees taller than the Hall of Supreme Harmony.

Emperors who forbid trees
in courtyards that could harbor enemies —
any trees taller than the Hall of Supreme Harmony —
still had cypress planted within a private rockery,

far from courtyards that could harbor enemies.
Deep in heavily guarded halls, walls, towers, squares,
amid cypress planted in a private rockery,
Emperors still dreaded assassins hiding in the leaves.

Deep in heavily guarded halls, walls, towers, squares,
Emperors pondered inauspicious calligraphy and,
dreading assassins hiding in the leaves,
spurned trees, fearing pain, 困，and trouble, 麻烦.

Emperors pondered inauspicious calligraphy and
built their Courts of brick and stone, fifteen layers deep,
as they spurned trees. Fearing pain, 困，and trouble, 麻烦
inside their painted palaces, they switched rooms every night

amid Courts of brick and stone. Fifteen layers deep,
beneath their silken quilts, behind their wooden screens,
inside their painted palaces, as they switched rooms every night,
they must have envied the poet, his moonlight, his leaves.

Beneath their silken quilts, behind their wooden screens
in their city of red walls and yellow roofs,
they must have envied the poet, his moonlight, his leaves,
his poems grown out of misty groves.