Initial of Creation, and / The Exponent of Earth—

By Gerald Maa — Fri, 02 Oct 2015 07:01:01 +0000

In that direction we
Left Pai on foot two days ago, our guide and muse
A hand-drawn unscaled map, the town of refugees
Our main goal, Chinese conversation luring us.
Water already gone and bodies flustered sick,
We reached the KMT homes, fronted by a gate
With banners spilling Chinese over gold Thai script.
We couldn’t stay long, the early sun beat down on us
So much on our way up, compelling pauses at
The Guanyin temple minutes out of Pai (unlike
The States, the line between the cities and the wild
Here stark) and at the town the Temple on the Hill
—so literally named—established; starfruit trees
Lined just the outer roads. We really only met
One man, a teacher at the local school estranged
From daughter, wife, and home who up the slanting road
From a friend’s stoop led us to his one-windowed room,
Shade-swelled, an archive of large-breasted calendars
Shingling the walls, hung high enough their eyes didn’t meet
Our own. Calligraphy ink, brushes, stone, and books
Citied the corners. Offering us tea, he called
Passers-by in to talk, the visitors a sort
Of status. Hidden for so long, their talk—of Mao
And Chiang Kai-shek, imbued with hopes the KMT
Resistance on the Mainland, in their recluse minds
Only, would finally succeed, and they’d return
To where their parents fled, triumphant—and this talk,
History-blinded clatter like jade swastikas
Tasseling the pole above the Buddhist vendor’s head,
I couldn’t dispel. Just couldn’t do it. So travel’s balm
For Mann’s von Aschenbach arose from the strange tongues
Around him, but I understood more chatter there
Than Langley Park or even Petworth. Heatstroke stunned
The day’s end and the next back at our fan-cooled room.
Returning hurt. We had to sit and shade our skin
At a cement gazebo, trying to out-plod
The sun’s fixed climb; the locals passed in lonely drifts:
A betel-stained smile, elderly all thickened with
Layers of clothes and angled with the grain just bought
Or harvested … In that direction, now from this
Station’s rattan bench, down the only two-lane road
This place affords, past temple, book-store, and cafes,
Towards where those three yapped back from, having shortly left,
I peer; now I revisit words from years ago,
Something I tried to title under Chinese script:

At Kunming University. Flower Garden. Night.
Under the roof the branch-knot half-erases stand
Two souls embracing, sheltered from the moon, and when
They step out of the shadow they will have one each.

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Initial of Creation, and / The Exponent of Earth—