Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé, 17 listopada 2012
Loneliness, I remember you before Polonius’ talk of friendship in old verse,
final ellipsis in short taps and kicks, gusting metaphor extending itself, to think
of death early on, at once counterpoint and bargain end to life, as if to say
long marches were tedium, as Stein’s invitations to garden parties, as want
as insatiable, ripped off book covers, on the quarterdeck or bowsprit, to see
larger ships, castle view beyond Pont Neuf, its elbow of a park, where I read
something of 12 rue de l’Odéon, as concrete a place as Mary’s Avallon, a read
open as Sylvia Beach’s hand, firm shake, first kindness, like the first verse
sciolti da rima, where rhymes recede, caesurae percolating, as the poet sees
rather than hears his words, oblique, their cello and echo, Rodin’s Thinker
in a new tableau, left arm extended like a big wing, fast updraft, as if wanting
flight as escape, denouement, hurtling towards the poplar, rising obelisk to say
this is the way Marlowe wrote of undying dandelions and mirrors, to say
Milton’s Aegean isle was like any other mapped dot, as open an autumn read,
as dismal and removed and blank a slate and stare, singly at Artemis, and want
a new fabric, sky and land, less architrave and Phrygian cadence than verse,
that invention meant movement, a rotation clear of the drydock, of thinking
what virtue to make into a creed, what rendered scruple to surface and see
in the light of day, not to decorate or scaffold, but in burning, to truly see
and intend the words, creation for all its vagaries like a tremulous saying,
its memory, distinct tremor, of Hecht casting Yolek between soldiers, thinking
his lungs would give way, along with his tiny legs, all for one midnight read,
with Spenser asleep, as with the common nightingale, in Augustan verse,
the way Nani tasted cumin, garlic within Ríos’ albondigas, softly wanting
more chiftele in her soup, more celery, carrots and halved onions, to want
so desire is made clear, like agulha rice soaking in flavoured water, and seen
from outside the Oriel window where a boy swivels his orpharion, girl’s verse
rolled into a scroll, yellowed, tied with daisy chain and bow string, as if to say
I made this for weight and resistance and home, so read it the way I read
your every word, fistmele of thought and image, on our long walks, to think
life is but its own long wait, Tennyson searching for the Happy Isles, thinking
maybe a late sun after the rain, in Paris too, its Cubist book carts, same wanton
disregard, or just joie de vivre, like Frost in his seat, same street café, to read
the same tone and rest at line’s end, his road home through apple trees, seeing
Joyce in a make-believe Dublin, as filled with grain and mettle, as if to say
even this libretto, even this madrigal has emptied itself into portamenti, verse
of wanderlust; think Illinois sonata into Hemingway’s Seine, its wave of seers
and their want of love, hope for soft courage, one more ostinato today to say
read me to sleep, beyond this city’s noise and history, and meandering verse.
* This poem placed as runner-up in the Georgetown Review Magazine Contest. The title is an allusion to Hemingway’s poem, “[Blank Verse]”, written in Oak Park, 1916. Published in Trapeze the same year, the poem is made up of missing texts, evidenced only through the presence of punctuation marks and symbols.
Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé, 12 czerwca 2012
lacquer table, black
plums like olives, mangosteens –
notions, orbs, backlit
yellow cabs, standstill
empty corridor – we sleep
airport of violins
how was life, cut up?
the cubist years of whitman
bread, fish paste, fondue
shared snacks over tea
you must need something – love notes?
blue shower curtains?
the way north is named?
tin soldiers stashed, old poster
rhetoric blinking
* This poem first appeared in the journal, "Umbrella Factory".
Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé, 12 czerwca 2012
today big credo
not this leaf moment, white, washed
out, fragment visit
not the eclipse, pitch, pivot
when you look away, thistlepD
not this, modern rust
avenue talk to built crowd
loud and backed and stone
alone, ice, gin, eyes, ajar
pebble in paper, cupboard
not that, still life, sink
you in slip of pink, above
this ribbon city
but for memory, not now
cerise, kitchen, tile, dislodged
but today, return
unsaid the misshaping red
not landlocked and lips
are the whole pictures spinning?
prolix yet moving items
* This poem first appeared in the journal, "Scholars and Rogues".
Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé, 12 czerwca 2012
i.
near this gate,walk in procession
orange sand in front, in a crystallized state
sandals in a single row, in a single line
in a hurry this sandfly, eager desire
in line with recollection, if possible no more blood
if possible, a manipur bush quail
in sandalwood, fully mottled in front
a sandbank, an open stage, walls of pali and sanskrit
yogesvara and ibn arabi in a daydream
a greenery of many types, of a long past
of the same sound and movement –
in front a love spell, from long ago
as tentative and bold, as insistent
as the starlings gathering, scattered grain
ii.
love ties like henna, lifted inside, out
where? where? there, in the vial –
there, an act, an air pocket
an orange-faced orchid ignored
hard petals ready to break off like a choka
as light a sea breeze, as light-footed
this remembrance, sandbar walk for basho
yesterday’s dream, glimpse of ikebana alike
handwriting as arranged, fingerprinted name
hovering in the air, in gilded layers in front
the gold ornament, her bridal forehead
as clean a face, as removed of feeling
to look down at the dust and ground
the northern pintail, wings clipped to its back
* This poem first appeared in "Sunrise From Blue Thunder: A Pirene's Fountain Anthology For Japan's Earthquake-Tsunami Relief".
Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé, 12 czerwca 2012
read and prophesy, he said; patrick white, joyride nor sorry astride —
of a juniper berry and clove-wing heart, cradled in pink coral from the reef
of his weathered eyes and rescue and leaving — that solitary line a bouts-rimés
what desert-fat(er-figural nothings;
but bobbing whispers, no wheel
the triple-nozzled lamp filled to its brim
and eventually, his backward glance and sigh
* This poem first appeared in the literary journal "Dear Sir". Its title, “nihil obstat?”, meaning “nothing stands in the way” in Latin, was written after I encountered White’s 1976 novel, A Fringe of Leaves. This poem is a novel-to-poem idiomatic/ekphrastic translation that experiments with hybridity and transformation, in an attempt to explore the difficulties of textual equivalence.
Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé, 12 czerwca 2012
excitation à la mode, an applied form
spirits on the move
high water;
vibrations in a pursuit; a persuasion
a displacement of this type, static, charted
internal; a sensation, an oscillation
of functions now frequented
wholly
by the ancestral
pumps / chains / pulleys / turbines
a sudden wave, velocity;
it is time —
amoral exemplar gone,
quaker belts and springs
*******
on bourne bridge:
what did the boreal owls say?
what did the number indices say?
what did they say about wuwei?
the water running
and half the world
and afraid to fall in love;
the case histories, for example
a conversion chart
* This poem first appeared in the literary journal "Dear Sir". It was written as an ekphrastic quasi-transliterative response to a poem by Murari about Mt. Kailasa, described in Sanskrit Poetry From Vidyakara’s “Treasury” (trans. Daniel H. H. Ingalls) as “one of the peaks of the Himalaya, which is said to rise as high as or higher than the sun’s orbit… important as the dwelling place of Siva and Parvati”. I began this poem seated at the stone boat and tea house at The Chinese Garden in Singapore, a visit I had not made in more than 25 years.
Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé, 11 czerwca 2012
small life is beyond
mention, or examination –
the bald eagle mats its fur
relief of gold flare
bold starburst, a prominence
down the steps is an alley
today’s west feeling
like broken nails, storm door
brass hinges undone
up the steps is a garden
chance the ascent two by two
wall fountains at back
and behind them, a coach box
its sacred heart and secrets
belief like lost sound
how is the truth to be said?
believe me, monday
believe me, monday
this morning like that friday
mother coiling, silent wings
* The line is taken from Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem “The Mother”. This poem was written as a response to and reflection on Brooks’ recording of the poem. It first appeared in the anthology "Writings from the Heart: Stories and Poems from Around the World".
Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé, 11 czerwca 2012
The German tavern made of timber, stacked logs.
Heavy against the sky, seated on long grass.
And an old stone. Between the stable and the pier
the cypress tree like a mother pulling up her hair.
You hear the knocking of three quatrains
against caesurae, their cadence an echo
of some fable told two hundred years ago.
A washcart falls on its side in the rain, three wheels
unbuckling, thick oak tumbling in big thuds
storm’s velveteen curtain east of the ridge.
Two barristers hold their coffee close to the face
leaning against the maypole, ribbons wet down
thin like another old willow, its shivery shadow.
The boy and girl exchange small, handmade letters
one sealed with candle wax and a thumbprint.
The other folded in with blue flax and dried myrtle.
“Wildflowers are hardy, simple. Little to look at.”
He looked out into the lake, then back to the pier.
Beneath their feet, a lavender spread of harebells.
* This poem was first anthologized in "Writings from the Heart: Stories and Poems from Around the World".
Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé, 11 czerwca 2012
There, Albert Gleizes hangs onto the shouldered architrave,
fingers straining against the old gypsum. The archivolt widens
into an atrium with flower beds. Blood irises. And magnolias.
From Iowa, then Hanover. Gleizes now nibbling at honeysuckle.
There is a minotaur, hands thrown up in mid-air as if flagging
the two men in black to stay behind the white and blue line.
Two libraries have risen out of nowhere. Miles of books, tomes
littering the horizon like an archipelago, like old tortoise shell.
Huelsenbeck insists on interjecting his aria with something odic.
Let him draw the clefs as triangles, surfeit of sweet things.
Let him draw his instruments as unaccompanied and strong.
Let the parasol moments remain sudden and flaring, like joy.
Let him break the square corners of this body, now shanty
in its cupboard construction. Its edges and angles frozen, riveted.
Blake’s giant angel, keyed up to its own dark irony. Is it there?
Has all of the garden been drawn in – its bramble, acacia, cypress?
Gleizes knows the garden will percolate a warmer summer,
new world of sunnier days, an open esplanade, its champagne
the shade of stratus clouds. Two builders downing their beers.
At noon, the women in denim walking into the virtual museum.
Richard Huelsenbeck’s musical notes, ticklish and tender
as ivories. Hear the long four-minute silence as if time stood still,
its head dropping into the hollow of a creek, Gleizes’ eyes
locking in, as if witness to a new syllogism, its tract of paint.
Let Gleizes draw his decorative and industrial art. On the white.
Not to worry about what will stay, what remains resilient.
Or fades with time. There, another peony has drawn itself in.
Into a scene, a tea ceremony with kabuki, flamboyant and loud.
Into the third act, its pavement as thick and sturdy a roofing.
Limestone, a bit of bitumen. Let Huelsenbeck draw in circles.
Let him doodle. With pencils and crayons. Oils and acrylic.
He’ll place himself in it. And Gleizes smiling, in his big chair.
* This poem is a reprint. It won the Writers Billboard Poetry Prize.
Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé, 11 czerwca 2012
A complex number doesn’t have to be truer than binomial theory, right?
Continental philosophy doesn’t have to be truer than an inward turn, right?
The sound of a bass clarinet doesn’t have to be truer than the sound of a sitar, right?
In The Little Shop of Antiquities, she wrote about relics and artifacts, touching them, letting their glow go to the riverbank and send back their sparkles. How the material object moves the spirit. The incomprehensible magic, the shapeless wonder, the familiar history in a middle to high passage.
Their irresolute beauty like an oiled and torched mirror. Slowly crumbling, then shattering.
Was it a wink or a squint as he scraped the bacon bits off the top of the bun?
Was it a duck or the snow or buttons of bark flaking themselves off?
Was it a shout to hurl itself over to the other side of the asphalt?
And who returned the question like an echo into the wind and orange dust?
* This poem first appeared in Fuselit, a literary journal out of London.
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