Friday, May 11, 2012

From THE MEMORY OF AUGUST by Zhao Dandan

White crystal moon of flowers
You're giving me powers
To imagine your stainless steel
Crescent swings in the sky
 loved by all the other moons
While you emanates from the dark
Powers of space.  Far away
I can see you shining like

A field of clear white clover and your
shining cradle holds what should be
Heaven for most of us--a field
of flowers like a bedspread,
a sense of the cosmos
Tied together with thin polyester.

When I first saw this crescent from another
space, cradled in the sureness of lunar gesture
and unlike our stark white moon in orbit
I was alone.  Not even the museum guard
could touch me as I circled the satellite
like the saucer from a lost in space episode—
it was this glittering polyester

landscape that I flew over unlike a moth
but knowing full well that other moons
in other places exist, some more beautiful
and compelling than others, some harsh
boiling pits like Europa, some frozen
disks, unlike our present subject—
queen of its solar system, a tricky turn in the sky.


1 comment:

Rudolfo Carrillo said...

i absolutely dig this poem! excellent work, sir.