"Canal."
"Canal" begins with a short epigram explaining
a situation, a historical situation,
that I was writing from.
It's from the Jesuit lettres edifiantes.
"The emperor, Shennong, ordered a celebration
for his mother's 50th birthday.
As the water route from the Beijing Palace to Yuanmingyuan
was frozen solid, thousands of workers
were charged with beating the water day and night to prevent
ice from forming.
This proved fruitless.
Canal.
Now, the green beginnings of the peach
hang from a Chinese branch, hard little fist shaking
at spring in the summer palace, somewhere here,
beneath my sternum, sore with working new earth.
This river, is it the wanting, too well-known?
From the southern temple where I'm all body, touch, and scent.
This canal to the red-tiled palace,
locusts, they say, of love's innocuous little barge.
Who located the heart so high and generous oversight?
And who do I employ for the beating of these things
where canals freeze between the stone
banks of blank familiarity and small arguments that harden
layer on layer?
There are secrets they say to maintaining
flow, fluids that move us to celebration beneath the gates.
In the backyard, gorges of blossoms
hanging from two species of pear tree,
spreading scent, a strange sweet mingling of warm feet
and perfumes.
I'm digging, and it feels like work
to keep the balance, the shovels repetitive blow.
And startle a sulfur gold oriole rises from the overturned earth
in endless furrow.
And it occurs to me to question the reverse of water
has become too liquid where the other springs resurge strong,
floods drip, strangle the garden of perfect brightness,
or hydrous arms reach beyond their well-worn beds.
How to harden superfluid desire?
If emperor, I'd order a million red troops
to press their thick fingers to this gushing in my heart."