Prose

There is a stillness in the air, like the mendicant with his begging bowl. He doesn’t ask for alms, only food like a bowl of cooked rice. The old lady scrapes some from the bottom of her wok, charred and bits of black, and hands it to the boy outside her window. She gestures towards the mendicant, who has looked away into the alley, its own shadows merging into darkened doorways. “All night, the sound had come back again,” Robert Creeley starts off on his poem, his voice serenading this slower evening. Like one of its lines, the poem too is something other than this. Something more than Yongdingmen Zhan, where we all seem to be headed. It is not the “Beautiful Strange” of Bedrock or the “Prelude in G Sharp Minor” by David Helfgott. The poem’s notes are softer, languid almost. Like the carp swimming into the curve of its own small trek across the duck pond.


* This poem is a reprint. It first appeared in the literary journal "Ceriph".