The Embroidery - Harrison Tao

Today is the 20th anniversary of my mother's passing away from melanoma, and I am taking "license" to post my elegiacal poem to her.   We had a complex relationship strained by the clashes caused by the challenges of raising me in two Western cultures (Brazilian and American) so dissimilar from our ancestral one.  Regardless, my own maturing (and a good therapist) has given me peace and perspective.  She loved me as best she knew how (and could) in a life that saw huge transformations and losses, and where her own needs and dreams went largely unfulfilled.  My mother was a strong and passionate person who deserved an easier and more rewarding emotional life than she ultimately lived.  She died angry and "raging against the dying of the light" (Dylan Thomas).   Whereas I was perturbed at the time, I now view the witnessing of her last breath as a gift. I love her and I miss her.  

As I get closer to - perhaps - "seeing" her again, I focus on how much love and affection she showed her only grandchild, my daughter.   Here is a link to a longer commentary.
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The  Embroidery 
                                  to Lee Pik-Yuen (Lily Tao), 1916 - 1990

What song for a life of sorrows?

What sorrows steep within a tea?

What tea for partings without the proper song?

In less-than half the heartbeats you carried me within,

an obscene rebellion tunneling beneath the skin
collapsed all the familiar contours:

your body now a ladder of bones

in an emptying hospital room,

and the high-collar Shantung dresses,

slit-to-the-knee brocaded sheaths

of an abrupted youth and Shanghai sweets,                                                 

become an anonymous sheet

I would not let be pulled over your face.

So much was hidden already:

the kneelings by the carved chest

left in Brazil,

your tai chi-smooth splitting of the twin brass-locks

to raise the fishermen, the village,

the pavilion in the cloud,

to furlough from a scented darkness,

song-birds straining their silk threads,

two  dazzling butterflies

flightless, though unpinned.

Contemplated for a pot or two,

yet always re-folded, never displayed,

you always camphored it away,

the creases deepening

unsmoothable as the choices made:

strength to a weary husband,

solace from a tended rose-bush: 

yourself a muted nightingale 
in an unlocked cage.

Your face still now, 
moon-mottled and breath-less,

the eyes tranquil seas, finally,

this son, twice-born without a voice,

unfurls it now, pennant and shroud,

to sing you homeward

with words you would not recognize,

to return your ashes into steps.

Though there is no more pleasing,

I take the silence as approval:

I drink my fill, 

and call it tea.

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The embroidery seen in the first photo hung in the space (the cinder-blocks with the black strip) between the two windows - the two pieces of plywood - in my bedroom.  (The fire started below it along that wall.)  The first photo is the only evidence it ever existed.  So it goes.... 

Paris - My Troy - Harrison Tao

 It had never been my intention to have any of my own poems here for a simple reason: no reader should think that I considered anything of mine as good as any of the ones I would select.  I've broken that rule a couple of times already, mainly from being lazy while trying to keep to my self-imposed rule of one-posting-a-day.  

I am breaking it again, but for a good reason: to illustrate the comments about yesterday's poem by Wing Tek Lum.  The two poems (his and mine) follow the same idea: short snapshots along a relationship time-line.  Once you read both, you will see why his is the superior.  (Seeing that difference is important IF you care about knowing what makes one poem "better" than another.)  As for emotional "effectiveness", reading this poem is picking at my scar: reading his poem is picking at his scar.... Even now,  at this distance in Time, reading mine is difficult as it reanimates a "me" and a state of feeling that is now a bittersweet memory.  This was my first published poem (1995).
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Paris  –  my Troy
                                 for Helen
I

Lunch at Odeon, all a blur,
but not you ascending the stairs as if on air,
smile rounding to the balcony table:
afterwards so absorbed
my gouramis unfed for days.

II

On a bench at the Air and Space,
Brancusi’s Kiss for a template,
my skin singing from your embrace,
the watchers in the IMAX crowd
edging closer to thaw themselves.

III

Marie’s “Zee rroom is not rrehdee!”
casting us out to wander
those early hours in Paris,
but it led to that first café,
bread, cheese, and a walk on a quai.

January dusk on the Petit Pont,
gloveless hands cradling the Nikon,
my breath condensing on cold metal,
Notre Dame and you on the film inside:
the one serene, the other…hair redder than the sky.

The fish restaurant and that Gauloise
close enough to ashen your face:
we swore to be ready next time and bought
cheap cigars at a tabac shop,
talisman and revenge against foul Gauls.

Night and the Champs Elysee,
café sitters watching our play:
you asking me not to ask you
to marry me, and I not listening,
on one knee the next day at the d’Orsay.

IV

Last week, your moss-green coat
with folds in back like angels’ wings
strobed past on another woman:
my mid-speech words crickets
suddenly silenced,
even by a counterfeit.

Your slightest displacement of the air
shatters my peace one, ten, any thousand li away:
the least alteration in your heartbeat
resonates through all matter to vex mine.
You said: “I love you” first.
                                                                                           Harrison Tao - Chinese-American

Urban Love Songs (after Tzu Yeh) - Wing Tek Lum

 Biographical information on Wing Tek Lum (1946 -  ) is limited.  He is from Hawaii, has degrees from Brown Univ. and Union Theological Seminary, works in the family's real estate business, and won literary prizes eighteen years apart.  The form of this poem is strikingly similar to the one I used in my first published poem.  (The anthology where I found this one was published in 1991 and my poem was written in 92-93 and published, if memory serves, in 94.)  Maybe it's something in the water....  Purely for "contrast and compare", I will make mine tomorrow's selection.  My brain tells me his poem is the superior: I feel no envy.    My heart says it does not matter: to share the source is a bonding sorrow.   The larghetto (2nd)  movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto # 27, to which I am listening, reminds me of that. 
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Urban Love Songs (after Tzu Yeh)

You stop to watch the Mandarin ducks.
The rest of us continue on to the flamingo lagoon.
I would like to ask what attracts you to them.
But my feet keep walking, I don’t look back.

                      *   *   *
From a piece of cloth I cut out a heart.
In the Laundromat it is washed and dried.
I can spend whole hours watching it toss and tumble.
I wonder if you feel the same way as I.

                     *   *   *
I wave as you enter; you take your seat smiling.
This same coffee shop now feels crowded.
We whisper to each other:
all eyes have noticed something’s changed.
 
                     *   *   *
I’ve bought a new phone and an answering machine
because I know you will be calling.
Here’s the number, which only you will have.
I plan to change the tape every hour on the hour.

                     *   *   *
Our friends are laughing.
They say we sit so close in your old Buick
it has become second nature for me
to exit on the same side as you.

                     *   *   *
Pinocchio’s back!
Let’s relive that night at the drive in
when I whispered that his nose was giving me ideas
and you got into my pants for the first time.

                     *   *   *
You drop the laundry off going to work.
I bring the bag back when I come home.
Neatly folded, your underthings are left on the bed
- I wish to respect certain cabinets as yours.

                     *   *   *
You shut the window rushing to your covers
complaining of the cold night.
I need fresh air, but am willing to compromise.
Let’s just pull up the sash halfway, okay?

                     *   *   *
We hunt for photos in my parents’ storeroom.
Look how young I was and full of dreams.
On the way out you brush against a cobweb.
Your flailing arms make me afraid.

                     *   *   *
A firetruck screams through my heart.
Douse the flames! Douse the flames!
I awake to find my pillow soaked with sweat.
For a moment I thought it was my tears.

                     *   *   *
You’ve stacked your boxes neatly by the door.
I find atop one Chinese poems I had bought for us.
Quietly I take the book out.
I resolve to tell you this after you have moved.

                     *   *   *
For my clogged sink I called a plumber.
When my cat got ill I took her to the vet.
My heart is broken
- I will not ask you to come to mend me.

                     *   *   *
Last night you made me so mad.
I’ve resolved never ever to speak to you again.
I regret having to put my foot down so.
I’m sending you a telegram to let you know.

                     *   *   *
One friend I know cut her hair short.
Another shaved his beard without regrets.
I would walk this city naked and bald
if ever I thought I could be free of you.

                     *   *   *
After you, I took up jogging.
I wore through my running shoes in no time.
One night I chucked them down into the trash chute.
See how trim I am these days!

                     *   *   *
Once I bought a single chrysanthemum on a stem.
We watched it blossom, red and full.
Those times now bring a smile to me
finding its brown petals as I sweep the floor.

                                                                                          Wing Tek Lum - Chinese-American

Inca Stones - H. Tao

Though we have been uncoupled for 20 years, today, April 2nd, 2010, would have been my 33rd wedding anniversary.  I know because it's the day after April Fool's Day.  I tried finding a poem that would be appropriate to the occasion, but was unsuccessful. So, I will intrude one of mine into this humbling company, beg your indulgence, and hope you'll forget it in a week.  I wrote it in the early 1990s after her confession.
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Inca Stones

I am the ghost by the bedside
watching them

joined like the stones
of Cuzco's Inca walls:

No room between

for even a blade
of grass.

Lighter than a sigh,

I float on.
                                                           
                                
                                                             Harrison Tao