Apparently I am allergic to coming back to Taiwan. This time, symptoms started a day before I lef tthe Netherlands instead of four days before; maybe my body didn’t really believe I’d leave after so long. First I got sneezy and hay feverish, now my nose has cleared but I’m coughing. Hopefully this will go away in a day or two, not linger for a month like last time.
If circumstances, the weather, and my sinuses all cooperate, this weekend may include paragliding! Also, while I’m exclaiming, my oars are here in Taiwan! The next challenge is to get them through customs.
Meanwhile, here’s some old stuff I’ve recently revised. I’m posting it here mostly for my own reference – if it’s here I can find it when I want it. . Here’s the first: the first verse has been posted here, but the second is new. I think it needs a third – maybe one will hit me when I go back to the Netherlands in June. I still regret not being able to work in the ducklings!
Spring on the Canal
I.
Persephone proceeds, neither heralded by horns
Nor striding a red carpet like the royalty she is.
Scarcely noticed, she drifts amid a green mist
Glimpsed through grey and winter-knotted boles
Bedecked in cherry blossom, adorned with wild fern
On her sweet inexorable return to the upper world.II.
Persephone’s whisper swells to Maia’s song;
New growth quickens. Like a green flame
It licks up trunks and along branches.
Buds swell and burst into blossom;
Cherry and dogwood riot among the sober oaks,
While aspens in unseasonable white
Shiver in still-cool breezes.
The rest are behind a cut, because these have all been posted before and the changes are mostly minor things.
Knuckled Down
Laughing, she danced across the moonlit bridge
If she saw the flicker in his eyes as she whirled into his arms,
She forgot it in his kiss.Years later, she remembered that odd look.
Her listless step and dowdy dress spoke,
As her stiff mouth would not,
Of her journey from that laughing girl.She was too spirited, he said, too frivolous,
Not fitted to her place. Word by word
He bricked her in alive, imprisoned her
In a cell of the spirit, trying to quench her spark.The night she finally ran, she wore over dull clothes
A crimson silk scarf, bought from hoarded dimes
And hidden for months in a secret back drawer.At the bridge, she left the car.
Then, laughing through tears,
She danced across in the moonlight
And whirled into the arms of freedom.
Yiddishkeit
A Jew is like cloth dyed in tea
Soaked and steeped until the essence
Will never leave her pores.
When you prick her,
She bleeds mama-loshen
In the backs of her ears
She hears the voices of old women
A hundred generations of them behind her
Brewing their tea and their talk, as old women do,
Their words, in Yiddish and still older tongues
Prickling the edges of her understanding.
It pigments her corneas, to color her vision.
She may choose what sort of a Jew to be
As she can choose what sort of a person to be
But like her parenthood,
No surgery can remove the essence
Of a people’s ancient memories
That dance, for this daughter,
In her irrevocable soul.
Bloodstone, Bronze Ribbons, and Bone Roses
I can see you hoarding, dragon-style,
Sitting and sifting mixed treasures through your claws.
Words gleaming red as garnets,
Stones glowing subtle as sonnets.I can see you working, mason-style,
Fitting the rocks, and building them into a wall
Pinching flint flakes off a stone,
Smoothing the side of a stanza.I can see you glowing, stained glass-style
Framing the bright bits together in shape of a tale,
Shifting sunlight to sapphire and ruby,
Wreaking rhythms to fire-song and story.I can hear you singing.
Deborah Milton Speaks
I work my tapestries in gold and silver;
My father plots his in syllables and sentences,
Then leaves them for me to stitch into concrete form
My pen for a needle, shining black ink for a thread.He has me read to him as well. I chafe
At speaking sounds without sense, gibberish,
But properly pronounced, for hours on end
Then gladly do I ’scape back to my needle.I wonder, though. My father at least has heard
His tapestries as I embody them,
Yet never has he seen the ones I stitch
Of precious threads to painstaking designs.What labour I expended on that mastery,
I do not think he knows. Did he but grasp
My skill, my hours of practise, would he deem
The study of ancient tongues an easier task?And better for both, if I but understood
The sense as well as sound in what I read?
Surely, comprehension would provide
More pleasure by far, to both myself and him.Or would he still believe the Puritan claim
That women must be shielded lest they learn
Too much, and like Eve, yield unto temptation
And fall, beguiled, to the serpent’s lure?If I could learn this art – as I have done,
I could have learned what men learn in its stead.
I do not know what I could have done more,
Or how my knowledge might have been employed.But – my father knows the depths of good and ill
And he is known as England’s paladin,
A great soul. With his blood and his example,
Who can say what I might, or might not, have been?Instead, I stitch my thoughts in gold and silver
My father’s words alone flow from my quill.
My life is most demurely circumscribed
No dangerous knowledge comes within my ken.I will not sin great sins. Kept from the edge
Of that precipice, neither will I build a bridge
Across, and help to smooth the path to Glory
Nor help my fellows on. Is ‘t worth it, then?
Not open-minded
The locals are terribly nice. They try so hard
To keep their pity out of eyes and mind
To keep their questions locked down, under guard,
They’d sooner lose a lobe than seem unkind.
We chat instead of small things, daily news,
Of favorite foods and places that we’ve been
They ask for my opinions and my views,
And talk about which teams they think will win.
They guard, from habit, top-thoughts they’re conveying,
Forgetting I can’t read beneath the mask
Not realizing their faces are betraying
The very things they’re careful not to ask:
I see the thought they’re keeping locked behind:
“How can you truly love without shared minds?”