The Garden

Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall
She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Garens,
And she is dying piece-meal
              of a sort of emotional anaemia

And round about there is a rabble
Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.
They shall inherit the earth.

In her is the end of breeding.
Her boredom is exquisite and excessive.
She would like some one to speak to her,
And is almost afraid that I
                 will commit that indiscretion.

Salutation

O generation of the thoroughly smug
     and thoroughly uncomfortable,
I have seen fishermen picnicking in the sun,
I have seen their smiles full of teeth
     and heard ungainly laughter.
And I am happier than you are,
And they were happier than I am;
And the fish swim in the lake
     and do not even own clothing.

The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the look out?

At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-yen, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.

You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gates now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
                                As far as Cho-fu-Sa.

                                                                                By Rihaku

And Flesh of My Flesh

There is a man in the street below, howling. Perhaps he is calling a name. You watch him for a long time through the shades. For a while you could see his face, but he has turned away and you don’t remember what it was like. He howls the same three sounds again and again. It might be a name or it might be words. Now he is struggling with something beneath his coat. If you opened the window you could hear but you’re afraid to open the window. Two short sounds and a long soft o. He looks like he is fishing for something in the inner pocket of his coat. Only it’s taking him a long time. For some reason you think he’s going to raise his hand up and show what he finds when he finds it. He twists his arm beneath his coat and never stops howling.

The two short sounds are Eh and Ah. When you focus on them you think you can hear more. Something wider in the first. Something round. Hard sounds in the second, maybe ar and maybe ga or gar. If you took a moment you might figure it out but as soon as they’re over you start thinking about the window and about the man and his coat and by the time they come again you haven’t learned anything. Eh Ah. Oo. Eh Ah. Oo. There’s something awful about the way he twists his arm. In the silence after the Oo stops and echoes back from the end of the block he is looking down at his chest and when the Ah starts again he looks up at the windows, and always to a different place. His arm twists and it looks like he’s digging, you think, and you’re afraid. He’ll raise his hand and there won’t be anything in it, just things stuck to it and stuck beneath the nails, ragged, sticky pieces of things, and the color of his hand will be all wrong. Before he can howl again you close the shades and sit with your back to the wall and look into the dark room where the line broken shadow of the shades is bouncing. Wide and thin and wide and thin like the breath of bones. He howls again. He’ll raise the hand and in it something cloudy pale, stuck with pieces and long as a knife. She was like this, but you don’t remember how.