Grasping Misapprehension

Which is more me,
a lemon drop melting on my tongue
or spittle drying on my chin?

Which is more me,
that paper I no longer understand written for a syntax seminar
or the unconscious grammar that's in us all?

Which is more me,
a mangled, still warm, severed thumb
or a well-formed stool in my sigmoid colon?

Which is more me,
the intention to stop drumming the table
or the fingers persisting?

Which is more me,
I, lying blankly here,
or this yellowed paper in your hand?




  

A New Li Bai Translation

VIEWING THE MOUNT LU WATERFALL

Above Censer Peak, sunlight on purple smoke.

The falls, a curtain hanging in the distance,

is a torrent plunging three thousand feet down.

The Silver River rolls from highest heaven.

Two Poems for Joseph Campbell

1.  THEN IT'S TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN


The god who holds our world
in a slowly closing hand
sits for her moment
in the warm palm of another.




2.  INNUMERABLE GODS AND ALL ARE LOKI


The gods have fled
before our widening gaze,
first beyond the sun and moon,
then beyond the stars,
the galaxies,
the multiverse,
leaving no trace,
not even their laughter.

A Brief Foray into "And" and Beyond

Listening to an installment of the podcast Lexicon Valley about constructed languages, I learned of one called Loglan.  It's an attempt to make a language as logical and free from ambiguity as possible.  This ambition makes for a very complex language because there has to be a one word, one meaning relationship and a syntactical way to make every phrase and sentence univocal.  For example, "and" seems to indicate a pretty simple notion.  But it comes in different flavors.  For example, it can tie two things that do or are something with each other together or two things that are or do the same thing separately.  "Mary and her mom swam across the pool" vs "Mary and her mom had Mrs. Smith for third grade."  Each of these English "and's" would require in different word in Loglan.

What particularly got me thinking is that our "and" can couple both simultaneous and sequential events.  "Mary walked from one end of the block to the other and counted all the sidewalk squares" vs "Mary walked into town and bought a new coat." This distinction reminded me of something about the Khmer language that has nagged at me from time to time.  "Neng" is the Cambodian word for "and," but it can also be a future marker like "will" or "be going to" in English.  Mary neng her mom go to the market" vs "Mary neng go to the market."  I could never figure out what shared meaning underlay these two uses.  But if you think of "and" as a sequencer as in "Mary walked into town and bought a new coat," then it is marking "bought" as in the future with respect to "walked."

Further, if you look at how Khmer expresses the past, it's often with a perfective particle, that is, a word that's added to the end of a phrase or sentence.  This word is "hawy" and I think it's basic meaning is to indicate that whatever came before in the phrase has been fully realized.  Sometimes it can best be translated by making the English verb the simple past or the present perfect.  Sometimes it can be translated as "already."  And sometimes as an emphatic like "very" or "really." I think "hawy" works in Khmer approximately the way "le" works in Mandarin, both in syntactical disposition and in range of meaning.

Anyhow, what I thought was interesting was the notion of time-indicating words having some underlying broader meaning that resulted in their having other meanings that are, at first glance,
unrelated.  

Two Ci Poems

IN LOVING MEMORY OF MY WIFE


Life, death--a blurry line, these ten years past.
I dare not remember,
but I cannot forget
her lonely grave, leagues away.
Nowhere here to confide my sadness.
Even though we met, she would not know me
with my face of dust,
my temples of frost.
Dreaming last night, I returned to our town:
A window, a small room.
She was combing her hair.
Each of us staring, wordless,
recalling then our place of lasting sorrow,
always in moonlight,
the hill of scrub pines.
     --Su Shi




FEELINGS AT NIGHT


Long willow threads in light spring rain.
Water clock sounds beyond the flowers.
Border geese startle, crows fly away.
Golden partridge, a painted screen.
A thin, fragrant mist
seeps through the curtain.
Gloom over house, pond, and pavilion.
Candles gutter out, brocades hang low.
All a dream beyond your ken.
     --Wen Tingyun

As If They Were Polished Wood

Changing again the vacuum
cleaner bag full of dirt
dragged in by successive
shoes and paws

lit through a window
with glass old enough
to have eventually run
like rain
down itself

balanced on one foot
hands hyperextended
the apsaras on the bookcase
dance so slowly
we do not see them
moving.

Phoenix

She no longer keeps up
with the younger dogs.
So I take her for walks
by herself now.
She ambles along slowly.
She stops and sniffs
for a long time
over a few inches of ground.
Stops and stares ahead
at I don't know what.