WEBVTT

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One of the conceits I
write from in this sequence

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is that my grandfather
Kubota knew

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of the poets of Angel
Island in San Francisco

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Harbor, the Chinese immigrants
who were incarcerated

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and detained sometimes up
for years in the barracks

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at Angel Island.

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Here's a ship from China
docking at Angel Island.

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And those, that's the barracks,
the picture of the day.

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Here are some Chinese
immigrants waiting

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for vaccination and the
commander of the post there.

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And these are the poems
they carved on the walls

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at Angel Island.

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It became one of the things that
they did was they made poems up

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and they transferred them
from their paper composition

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or oral composition to
these carved ideograms

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on the walls of the wooden
barracks on Angel Island.

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These were discovered
and then preserved

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and you can go there
today and see them.

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They've been translated of
course by Mark [Him Mark Lai]

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excuse me--

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Mark [Him Mark
Lai] and Marlon Hom

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into wonderful, wonderful
English poems, in two books.

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One is called
Island, and the other

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is called Gold Mountain Songs.

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So Kubota writes
to these detainees.

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"Kubota to the Chinese poets
Detained on Angel Island."

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"My geography does not match
yours, surrounded by the Bay,

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and the city so close you could
see it from the hill of Island.

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I am at the middle of an ancient
sea, raised up out of water

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to make a dusty land
of red and pink rock,

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yellow cliffs, and snow peaks,
far from the great ocean you

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cross from your home villages.

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But we spend our days
alike, gazing at bare walls

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composing poems
to carve on them,

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bedding down at night
to the whistling of wind

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through bars and barracks.

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When the moon shines and insects
chirp under our bunks, grief

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and bitterness wrap around
us like cold winding sheets

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and we rage against the
whites, and the promises

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this land made to us.

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It would be a heaven
of gold mountains.

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It's hard living
through confinement.

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Our family is not
near, interrogators

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trying to catch us in
stories that do not

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match what your immigration
papers say that do not match

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lies informants
have said about me.

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Can you remember how many
steps to the duck pond?

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How many houses were
South of the village well?

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Which older brother died
in the year of the ox?

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They asked me about the
ink stone and the radios

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in my house the FBI
took on December 8,

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about the military school I
attended in Hiroshima, though I

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was born in the US like them.

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We tried to act bravely,
as we were taught,

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chest full of blood,
but we are not heroes.

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The wild geese of the
Bay echo your cries.

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The coyotes mimic mine and only
ghosts escape these places,

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rising from the
cold bodies of men

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who hang like butchered meat
in the lavatories, pale light

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shining through the thin
gauze of their bodies.

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They will see their families,
but only from the clouds.

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I pity them, but share my dreams
with you, poets of island,

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trapped beneath the
guard towers of history.

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When they ask you your brother's
name, say, it is Kubota.

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When they asked me what light
attracts the fish at night,

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I will answer, the light
of angels from Island.

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When they ask what
fish come to the light,

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I will say a fish that
swims the river of heaven."

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