It's called "Chinese Vase."
I guess it's what they call a persona poem.
"Chinese Vase."
Seats of red velvet as dark as a bloodstain.
I stand back in the wings to watch the stage,
where a bear on a unicycle rides circles
around a boy dressed as a clown, who
juggles two flaming torches.
But the audience is bored, and the noise
of people stirring and whispering grows louder.
The boy notices me watching and I nod.
In a moment, the act closes to perfunctory applause.
Someone praises me on the performance.
Should I tell him he lies, or let him know
that I lie by thanking him?
Quickly, I see to the packing of costumes,
hoping to avoid the manager, but he stops me
at the door, then grins into my face before letting me go.
That afternoon, I had been waiting for him in his office.
When he arrived, I was standing over the fragments
of a small Chinese vase.
I explained there was an accident,
that I hadn't even touched it.
"On the contrary," he said.
"You broke it because it was beautiful."
Much later, I stare from a train window
as the landscape unrolls under a full moon.
I try to imagine men and women asleep
in those cottages, the smell of their bodies, their legs
entwined together, but the landscape
looks like a scene painted on canvas
and propped at the rear of the stage my train rushes across.
On the seat beside me, the boy is asleep,
covered by a red cloak.
I decide to walk back through the train.
Here and there, I see a man smoking or staring
from a window, but most of the compartments are dark.
The bear's cage is back in the baggage car,
and when he sees me, he grunts and pushes
his nose between the bars.
I search my pockets for something to give him,
but they're empty.
Scratching his snout, I think of the years
spent with this animal, crisscrossing the country
so people can watch him dance.
Taking a key, I unlock the cage and let the bear out
into the car.
The bear lowers his muzzle into my hand.
I kneel down.
I feel certain that my face resembles his face,
questioning and stupid.
The side door of the car is partly open,
and I look out at the night sky.
In the distance, the lights of a town
join together into one great cluster of light,
and I think, that is youth seen from a solitary darkness
of age, a place where audiences cheer
and the bears are all young.
The door rattles beneath my hand and I
tell myself that I must go back, must
return the bear to his cage, but, like a child allowed
to stay up for some special event,
I beg myself for just another minute as the lights seem
to coalesce into memory.
There is my marriage and the birth of my son.
There is a woman's face, her hair
held back by a black ribbon.
I reach out to touch the dead white cheek.
The face rushes toward me as the moon breaks from behind cloud.
Light.
Light speckles the landscape like pieces of Chinese vase.
I reach out my hand and it seems I am flying.