As Far As Cho-Fu-Sa
If you are coming down the narrows of the river Kiang,
let me know beforehand and I will come out to meet you
as far as Cho-Fu-Sa.
-Li Po, “The River Merchant’s Wife,”
as translated by Ezra Pound
What I am, ever, is this: composure of stone.
Spare weather visiting the garden, small as the hours
I keep watch by. Beyond this wall
Must be better weathers. This claw of stars
Must constellate somewhere into a bear,
Else names would lie.
Since winter’s thaws, no script from you
Save this: “I travel the river and follow
The white gulls—”
Husband. See me walking the dusty pass
Where loom our prior lives?
Here the years pass that I enshrine
Within these walls, sparing nothing
From the ardors of my stare. Blue plums,
Paired butterflies repeat you
In a walled world. I tell myself
To clear the moss, mend the gate
So long unswayed and caked with dirt,
But nothing moves. Somewhere
You are actual. Happen to me there.
MODUS
Love, sweet as sin,
I’m terrible with gin.
No bones about it.
Home’s the old slick
space between the folds
of her silk kimono.
Home’s the snarl
of testy askals[1] leering
at imaginary ghosts.
What are we
in the flow of days
but ache and swoon,
What ties ensnare us
like the nightly coil
of her pantyhose
Or the terrible shine
of my buckle’s silver
in a black room?
[1] The Tagalog word for stray dog.
Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta hails from Manila and holds an MFA from the New School University in NYC. Her first book of poetry, The Proxy Eros, was published in 2008 by Anvil Publishing Inc., the foremost publishing house in the Philippines. Her work has been published in The New York Quarterly and will appear in the forthcoming issue of Defunct, an online literary magazine. She has also received Palanca and Philippines Free Press awards, the top literary honors in the Philippines.
If you are coming down the narrows of the river Kiang,
let me know beforehand and I will come out to meet you
as far as Cho-Fu-Sa.
-Li Po, “The River Merchant’s Wife,”
as translated by Ezra Pound
What I am, ever, is this: composure of stone.
Spare weather visiting the garden, small as the hours
I keep watch by. Beyond this wall
Must be better weathers. This claw of stars
Must constellate somewhere into a bear,
Else names would lie.
Since winter’s thaws, no script from you
Save this: “I travel the river and follow
The white gulls—”
Husband. See me walking the dusty pass
Where loom our prior lives?
Here the years pass that I enshrine
Within these walls, sparing nothing
From the ardors of my stare. Blue plums,
Paired butterflies repeat you
In a walled world. I tell myself
To clear the moss, mend the gate
So long unswayed and caked with dirt,
But nothing moves. Somewhere
You are actual. Happen to me there.
MODUS
Love, sweet as sin,
I’m terrible with gin.
No bones about it.
Home’s the old slick
space between the folds
of her silk kimono.
Home’s the snarl
of testy askals[1] leering
at imaginary ghosts.
What are we
in the flow of days
but ache and swoon,
What ties ensnare us
like the nightly coil
of her pantyhose
Or the terrible shine
of my buckle’s silver
in a black room?
[1] The Tagalog word for stray dog.
Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta hails from Manila and holds an MFA from the New School University in NYC. Her first book of poetry, The Proxy Eros, was published in 2008 by Anvil Publishing Inc., the foremost publishing house in the Philippines. Her work has been published in The New York Quarterly and will appear in the forthcoming issue of Defunct, an online literary magazine. She has also received Palanca and Philippines Free Press awards, the top literary honors in the Philippines.
