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[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
always fishes with good luck
from the edge of my father s desk.
The little carp he catches
smiles as if the line that dangles him
could suddenly plunge deep enough
to go home, to find the artist
[54]
who made him, the merchant
who sold him, the young man
who bought him and tossed
this treasure across the sea
to hook my father and me.
Unsent Postcard to My Father
This is Tianjin, cold and harsh, Aunt Grace s
old city. I want you to know K and I witnessed
the memorial to stand up for her American family.
For you. We didn t know what all the words meant,
but Papa, you can be proud of your sister. She
was a good wife and mother. In the eulogy
they said she was a great teacher and patriot.
So what, if she chose real China instead of your
American dream and married a man who called
himself heathen. She s saved, I hope, no matter
what she believed. Isn t that what true grace
means? As you always used to say, Papa,
Rest assured. Please.
[55]
SCARRED BAGGAGE
Something Lost
Once I saw on TV an old
Chinese woman with her voice
shaking tell how she fled the communists
during the civil war, when rich people like her
left everything behind, taking only the clothes
on their backs plus the valuables
they hid underneath to seek
freedom. She saw
herself a heroine, daring
to abandon most of her worldly belongings
for the cause of an abstraction. An admirable risk,
perhaps, except later I learned, when she dropped
like a small paper sack slipping from
a great bundle, the news that among
the things she left behind was
a baby her only
daughter. I think
her child comes home in my suitcase,
maybe in everyone s suitcase. She keeps on coming,
growing smaller, hard and bright as a pearl.
None of us knows what to do with her.
She s everything we ever did wrong,
failed to do, loved
but not enough.
The Key
A locked suitcase.
Tiny gold key. Lost.
Want to turn the lock,
open everything up,
burrow inside stuffing,
throw out silks, beads, letters,
[56]
dig down under thick wool,
find something hard,
shiny, the ache
of a gold tooth at night,
key itself
locked inside the suitcase.
Chisel, knife, axe.
Sister. Father.
Unpacking the Suitcase
Everything in order
when I packed my bag:
thick-soled shoes, cotton undershirts,
wool scarf for walking in bitter off-season cold,
two pairs of eyeglasses to guard against loss,
binoculars to help me see
even farther, the guidebook,
pills. I numbered
the days, baedekered and timetabled
my heart, wound it up tight with spirals
of cities, rivers and mountains, pagodas and shrines
cocooning myself from the one day of mourning I feared
would drown me with voices and faces, this funeral
journey disguised as
a trip. Now I come
home, open the suitcase, put away
silks, souvenirs, unsent postcards, coins
now worthless, small notebooks spotted with rain. Things
I didn t see inside the suitcase start rising up
dark as a mountain of rags: clothes I knew
well as my own skin turning to ruins
I dig through, mole-like, hands
into claws, raking what s
buried all the way
down to where
it hurts.
[57]
FOUND SNAPSHOT:
THE YEAR HIS SISTER LEF T
A young father pulls
back his small daughter
in a wooden swing,
a plank and two ropes
hung from an oak.
It s early evening
after work. He looks
tired, with his tie loose,
his white shirt open
at the neck. He holds
her steady and close
to him, pausing this
instant before he
lets her swoop out
among leaves and sky
back to his arms again.
The little girl s face
is complete as a rose.
For this one moment
her father belongs
only to her. He will
always stand there
to hold her back,
let her swing out,
bring her home.
[58]
REMEMBERING THE THREE
GORGES
for my father
The Yangtze River
flows wide and narrow,
narrow and wide,
like an ache that comes
and goes, a pain
in the shoulder
from holding your hand
for hours as you squeezed
along a narrow passage
I couldn t see, like
a pilot guiding a ship
blind. It was my third
night watching. My right
arm bent over the steel
bars to cling to what
was left of you, giving
me this ache that
stays with me
a year later, mark
of a grief I thought
had already loosened
its hold, the way
a flood withdraws,
leaving the shore
damaged, the way
your spirit flew
away from me, home
to your mountains,
far from the river s
changing path.
[59]
THE ROPE
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zanotowane.pldoc.pisz.plpdf.pisz.plkwiatpolny.htw.pl
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| Cytat |
Dobre pomysły nie mają przeszłości, mają tylko przyszłość. Robert Mallet
De minimis - o najmniejszych rzeczach.
Dobroć jest ważniejsza niż mądrość, a uznanie tej prawdy to pierwszy krok do mądrości. Theodore Isaac Rubin
Dobro to tylko to, co szlachetne, zło to tylko to, co haniebne.
Dla człowieka nie tylko świat otaczający jest zagadką; jest on nią sam dla siebie. I z obu tajemnic bardziej dręczącą wydaje się ta druga. Antoni Kępiński (1918-1972)
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