We are in a moment of existential twilight…
On a rooftop gazing over subtle Kunming
Yang Chen and I bore testament
while fading day and the burn of coal
consumed the visible in an urban chalice
here one fifth of the living humans
stoke their surging wishes nightwards
surely I once flowed here also in a life
I sense it in the lone opera singer’s howl
You cannot change China
he bestowed part warning, part asking
part basking in the ephemeral duskdrop
It is not what I’m wishing,
My friend of this moment
But merely to see her and inhale,
Thinking on how the earthy pragmatics
of this vouchsafed wisdom will refract
When Christianity reveals its true being
In a form no one alive expects.
_______RS
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Yang Chen = Morning sun. like it.
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Didn’t know… he was Cantonese, so I assumed his name meant something I did not understand. Mostly, I knew some Mandarin then.:)
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Brilliant poem.
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Thank you truly for saying, for I assure you quite honestly that I cannot tell. 🙂
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I too have heard the lone
opera singer howl, R.S.
perhaps as a timely warning
of a fire dragon on the prowl
in the year of the water tiger
meanwhile all creation
anxiously awaits
the turning of the dial
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pretty good chance it will turn a bit in our lifetime 🙂
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If only the prayer wheel
turned a bit faster 🙏
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yes. 🙂 plus, if only some forces weren’t turning it in the opposite direction.
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Whatever turns you on, RS 😎
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I felt your poem, so open-ended, open to a reader’s straying thoughts, or looking for comparisons they too have experienced on hazy coal dust afternoons. My mind went right into, “basking in the ephemeral duskdrop” Your descriptions delicious, your end of the world hints..intriguing.
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thanks Karima… not end though, transformation 🙂
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