R. Joseph Hoffmann's Blog: Khartoum, page 11

The Truth in Religion

... is not that we know the nature of God
or that there is God or isn't God.
No, it is that Error is as strong as Truth,
as real as burned villages or the smell of gangrene
in a battlefield tent. It is not St. Michael on canvas
at the final battle with a flaming sword,
a Jewish devil squirming beneath a boot;
it can't be washed away by the flow
of a Mother's tears beneath dear Gesu's cross:
It is the roil of your heart, the shudder,
as you watch the servants of error take
a whole thing, a pure thing, a good thing
and shred it into meaningless, irrational parts
or take a radiant and supple thing
and change it by their words and pens to stink.

It is not that Jesus healed the blind man
but that he loved the light enough
to want men to see, or that he cured lepers
but that he hated what leprosy
did to Lazarus. Every day the men of violence
turn whole to parts, shatter meaning like glass
turning plain whiteness to yellow and green.
And the truth is not immortal.
It lives in us, dies in our disloyalty to fact
and no amount of weeping will
bring it back. Our children will live
not in the Florentine's hell but in a place
without windows or a lighted view beyond.

The Story of Jane

Jane had her wiles and her allure
and treated men like furniture.
Sofa, settee, or red divan
she flitted thus from man to man.

Until one day a chaise lounge buckled
while she was coupled and uncoupled
and landed on an Ottoman
a swarthy brute name Mo Khayyam.

Poor Jane now out of time and fashion,
defeated by a common cushion.
The boys will stare, girls will snicker
and no one thinks or cares to pick her.

To suffer we are born and bred
nor comfort find on cot or bed.
And even to pleasure become inure
from treating men like furniture.

Three Seasons

黄玟烨

i.
Stay for a year and leave as though
it had been set from the beginning.
Pretend there was no loss or winning,
but that the plan was bold enough
to make you dream beyond the scheming

ii.
I touch your flesh the way I might touch glass
and every night return you to the rack
glistening, except for oversight, perhaps,
where fingers traced diversions on your back.

iii
Ignore the man who is too fond of grieving
and sees beyond time's raging course to leaving.
Embrace the love who polishes his treasure
and makes a god of every lovely creature.

Memorial Day

In an hour
you dissolved twenty years
with swollen eyes and tears,
the memory of brown dust and incense
spreading across a marble slab.
The absurdity of innocence
burned and ended in you. And experience
began again, as though I had never
touched or craved, or quite believed.

The door is open. A camel is there.
She is frantic and shedding dust and hair.
She has run for ten thousand miles
to find me, remembering me,
and how I would pull her head
down to mind her, and hold her
next to my cheek for love--
her mother killed by stones
by cruel boys, by future men.
She is happy now, Camels can lie down
like dogs. But seldom bound
when strangers disturb their sleep.

I cannot understand the Desperate,
the souls panting for water
in these polluted lagoons and green
rivers. They can only hurt themselves
in this grim basin, this lake with
multitudes circling in the heat saying
This is the best, this is the beautiful,
this is the enchantment of the world.

The door open, the camel walks away.
She has been disappointed.
This time she will walk home; Why race
to a known destination--
a place of a billion similar faces
learned in all the same virtues
and customs and heart-denying etiquette.
She will not come again; she is tired
of open doors and shallow streams.
She will die of thirst and goodness along the way.

Lines and Spaces

i.
Your message reminded me
of the importance of space
in obtaining the nearness of cats.
My sister used to say
"Whatever you do don't chase them
or snatch them up from behind,
for cats are spiritual and you
are a ten year old glob of flesh
made fleshier with french fries
and Coke and pictures of girls.
As cats go, You are the devil.
That is why they hiss at you
and arch their backs and mark
on your PE clothes piled in the corner."

Let them come to you.
Pretend you are not even there.
Make yourself invisible
So that they feel the vibration
of inanimate desire without need,
but continue to read your book
or talk to friends and tell friends
they must ignore the cat
to get the cat's nearness.

ii

I want to feel your hand
pressed softly to my face.
I want you to lean against me
with the habitual insouciance
of sinking into your favourite chair.
You don't need to prove your claws;
I see the shreds and loops on carpet
and couches. My soul is your mat.
I am not the leader in this game;
I can't order you, or keep you
vibrating happily in my direction.
It is up to you when to circle, leap,
when to stay. I cannot even say
Come here, for I need this nearness,
this light warmth poured like spirit
upon stolid flesh. Your certainty
is bewildering, the rules are written down
and the spaces between
are the spaces I can't bridge
with urgency, gestures, or temptation.

Philosophy as the Pretext

The owner hissed the boy to attention:
Wàiguó pengyou has come for fruit. The foreign man
wants oranges, bananas, and a big pineapple.
Cut? he says--meaning out of its spiked shell.
Yes, of course, I say and watch him dip his knife
in a bowl of water, shake it twice, and slice
an end here, a meaty stroke down, then circling
the blade to create a spiral wonder, trickling
juice into the bag. I cannot wait to feel it on my tongue
the flesh against my teeth, crisp and young,
not too sweet, but sweeter than a strawberry.

As I approach my gate I think about your bravery,
the first time; I think: If only I had been as deft
with a blade shaving off the crust, to see what’s left
when the thorns have been shorn. Could I stare
at the succulent meaning of you, you--bare,
bereft of happiness, convention, and defense?
What was the meaning of delight, or permanence?

Lăoshī

Our souls touched hands, yours said,
There is no word for me in Chinese--
and I see through the worn look, the gravure
rising towards a tempestuous and unsure
outcome. My qualifications? These:
I do not hate poetry, or poets, and I have traveled.
Not much. Who has traveled as much as you?
And yet it has brought you here, to me--
on this grey couch, this office travesty.
I don't want to know about your sins, your marriage
or how much you care about Asia.

There is no word for you in English.
You have learned that journeys are circles
and circles are wheels that turn over
the same ground, over rocks and ruts:
You say, give me your reasons without buts.
Then you turn away. Life is fifty-fifty,
You are not sure of anything, except shifting
wishes and the breaking of certainties.
I saw you at evening on a park bench.
Willows drank the water, and I wanted to say
If you walk away, well--the herons will stay
but the blowing white spores, the wishes, will die.

Mrs Morgan

Traveling through the college
my daughter, scarcely four, saw roses
and said "Roses." Roses in her eyes
were now roses on her lips. Our guide,
a woman with daughters herself,
incommoded she liked to say
when her husband made off with the faculty librarian,
leaving her to books and motherhood
said: Yes. England is famous for roses,
and Oxford's have a special fragrance.
The child stopped solemnly beside the bush,
her hand outstretched to touch a petal
white and full of life: she tickled it gently
expecting it to retreat from her finger.
But the woman hissed. Go on. Take three--
This is what roses do to oblige us.
Roses love to be picked. It's their nature.
But a child cannot take that irony to heart:
Won't the bush miss them? She asked.
Oh, I don't think, said the round-faced woman.
The bush will hardly notice.
Roses are not greedy but giving.

Psyche's Arrow

You rambled through the upstairs.
I couldn't believe you'd come back.
We made love in a wooden wagon.
You said sorry I've been away,
but not from your dreams.
So I dreamed I needed to wake up
and every minute I tried, but no
you were back for good, you said--
and said "We need to walk--no good
lying around when we haven't seen
each other in a year. More than a year."
I closed my eyes and dreamed myself awake
knowing that when I opened them
you'd be gone. But you pinched my arm
and said "Stop doing that--it's pointless--
open or shut I am here. You have never
been able to close me out--at the door,
at the window. In your desperation
you knew I would come back.
It was always in your head
the promise I made to you
in the first kiss--and in the ring.
it was always right here,"
you said touching my chest,

The Sadness of Bái Sùzhēn

The crowd circles in a dutiful soft swirl:
grandparents on sticks, a braided girl
of six, hand held tightly by a sleepy aunt.
I have done this hajj before before but can't
bring myself to sing its sharp imperial glory,
or tell its myth again in a language worthy
of the poets who wrote--with the sadness of willows--
of the plight of the scholars and the sorrow
of men who lived by paper, ink and book:
'Amongst the mountain temples I look
for the osmanthus petals whence fell the moon
into this lake". Antiquity comes too soon
to places of great comfort and refuge where minds
fly to shed the crust of boredom and find
not peace but air and breath and guarded light--
gray light as on mist-strewn days. Warm and bright
the lake is not her best. The people come
but the spectre of Xu Xian sleeps solemnly at home,
slumbers and will not rise from the water
to greet the masses circling towards some center.