[536] Lighter than a feather
Guest poem submitted by Juned Shaikh, <shaikhjuned@> :
I
His voice was a broken tile
in a classical setting,
a clay edge grating against sky.
Now his silence speaks to
the classified space
in the front of the square.
II
A man in a corduroy hat is spinning
over the sea. Gu Cheng,
feeling light with a poem.
This was in the early days when,
the glaze not yet dry,
he would sit watching sharp
incredible outlines
rise out of the harbour
needing such a harbour
to displace waves
of pale terracotta branded with
the tight stamp of a seal.
Did he think he was like
Any young man clearing out a pigsty
Or a property?
He was his mother's obstinate child.
III
He left behind a set of graded bells.
He left behind
the slow build of stories,
tiles placed across the centuries,
each one taking off diagonally
from the one before.
His pain trickled down
through the floor boards.
Though he left with a poem
in his arms, he left
behind too much.
IV
Now he's lighter than a feather,
less material than snow.
In the Duke's hunting lodge
the stories fall in cryptic patterns
Cold blows the north wind,
Thick falls the snow.
Take my hand and go, love
Until the striped deer is back
With its scholars and poets gather
in the garden once more.
-- Diana Bridge
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Gu Cheng was a young Chinese poet, one of the group known as the 'Misty Poets'.
He came to New Zealand in the late 1980s with his wife, taught at Auckland
University and bought a property on Waiheke Island. He committed suicide there a
few years later, after first killing his wife, and left behind a young son. Gu
Cheng was sent to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution to raise pigs.
'Obstinate child' is a reference to one of his poems. The penultimate stanza is
adapted from Waley's translation of 'North Wind', from 'The Book of Songs'.
A native of New Zealand, Diana Bridge spent a large part of her life in Asia.
Being a `diplomat's wife' helped her travel extensively in Asia (particularly
India and the Far East) and develop an insight into the socio-political
conditions. Her writing helped her create an identity of her own, and over throw
the tag of a diplomat's wife.
Juned.