Poems by Inara Cedrins  

Scrim

Early, a cadre of soldiers ran through the hutong,

feet slapping. Beneath the tiled roofs of the hospital

with processions of dragons to keep out

bad spirits, a lone figure dressed in black performed

the moves of tai chi, the limestone pilasters that ring the rotunda

stretching around him like stiff lace. In the center of Beijing

why do I need a garden? The hutong market streets

are lavish with bundled bulbous roots, baskets of huge mushrooms,

interleaved, heaped lettuce and boxes of silvery fish,

some still wriggling. The tattered quilts of the country

bundle vegetables and babies alike. Weaving among green greatcoats,

laden pushcarts, motorbike riders with padded gauntlets drawn up

over their handlebars rivet the scene. I study

with a gooseneck lamp on my desk, in the simplicity of the room

where I've been issued flowered comforter and blue checked sheets,

an enameled basin, a thermos that keeps water hot forever,

it is enough. Evenings in the hospital compound

a red lantern glows over the white staircases,

the flash of Roentgen in one of the rooms a piercing gold;

the flare of light in the layers of construction further distant

like arc light one should not look directly at, like enchantment

that disappears when confronted.

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Killing the Bottle

I watched the flames of the candelabra go out:

the cups of the candles like calla lilies, flashed

on the wall, each quadrant a cusp, fluorescent.

I was thinking of mulberries,

how each is a firm cell of darkness

the color and taste of night

and of the mild eyes of the poet

bundled in a greatcoat on Saturday mornings,

riding his bicycle in lazy loops

with a canister of propane for the common kitchen

as if he could as well lob his poems

unfurling like a lily,

incendiary.

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Largesse

I waited for the poet at the gate of the compound,

where someone had been painting the sign easels blood-red

and the bottoms glowed with a stripe of orangey light

from the sun setting beyond the hutong wall.

In the dumpling shop window steam rose

past the red intertwined characters, the tiers of baskets;

the fine hairs of the fur collar on my black leather jacket

stirred against my cheek. In the taxi

we slipped through the streets like a gleaming needle;

under eaves lit red lanterns swelled. How I would hate

to be banished from these streets, the burnished

broken pavement, the old old trees!

This is a country with a lot of holes, he said

when I asked if he could get material he wanted to read:

somehow everything can find a way in. And yet told me

of the writer suspected of visiting a dissident in Paris

and upon his return to China, jailed for nine months.

At the writers' cafe, so many dishes, so many toasts,

and then they gambled: a girl with pigtails and a cigarette

clenched between her teeth, the dealer. We'd killed

two little clay bottles of strong spirit, and the man

with the plaid flannel shirt and refined features

at the head of the table would lift one to his ear

and shake it, listening, as though it were a conch shell

and he was regretful. One by one

they came to speak with me, covering their mouth with a hand,

withholding themselves to be polite: and I wanted to say

breathe on me, I am clay waiting to be brought to life. My companion

asked if the untouched cup was mine, ordered more tea, asking,

you know not to point the spout at anyone, don't you?

And when he rapped the table in thanks, explained it was in token

of the bodyguard who knelt in thanks when served tea

by his king. He opened for me an aperture

as though I were at a frosted pane

and had breathed on it, had pressed my thumb

to it for a clear small place

to see through: if I were banished

from China I could no longer breathe.

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Dissociation

As a catkin separates from a tree

I fell away from you in spring: was severed

though I wished to cling like a bit of gold-leaf pressed to the Buddha,

quivering in the wind, that gives it that peculiarly malevolent expression.

At my window above the quadrangle of pale-branched trees,

white chocolate on the sill, I corrected papers

in which a student writes of pears: their leathers are golden,

dotted with brown spots. Perhaps that fruit

is as protected as you, who used to sleep fitting your hand

around the clasp of a knife. The lily

whose shadow falls across the tight flesh of the melon

cohabits this room: I cannot know your body

with the knife scars on it. It was just after

International Women’s Day, and because you are good with knives

they asked you to cut the cake, and you gave each girl

a slice with a rose.

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Xizhimen Station

I came here once when it was raining

and they saved the front seat of the van

for me, crushed me in —

rubbing a small place on the vapor-fogged window

I saw the mahjong players crouching on tables

alongside the stacked bananas, the meat cleavers,

steam rising from bamboo panniers

that held stuffed dumplings.

Like the egg in its nest of potato,

I fitted. It was the fine oxhair rain

and on campus puddles under trees seemed to hold streamers

that extended to infinity. I felt I was needed,

even desired. But in rain on my birthday

at summer’s beginning, everyone has scattered,

and the way back is gloomy

to lie on an old narrow bed in a small dark room,

a butterfly collection in a box high on the bookshelf,

and wake to the bird that sounds like scissors

clashing outside my window.

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The Relentless Latitude

The aerial roots of the banyan tree

weave outside the window, delusive,

and further is the tree that produces at once fruit

and dangling green-bead necklaces of new

giving. Desire is the neon orange of the grape that has fallen

away from the cluster and rolls onto the curlicue of lace

and just glows there. It is smug

holding its tenure strongly, the way

drawing out the shadow of a tree can’t draw away

the root of it at dusk. I curl under the gauze of the mosquito net

and try not to calculate the distance

between our countries.

Riverbed is dry.

A crab crawls up sandy beach,

the moon is lonely.

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In the Land of Loquats

In the future I know that I will dream I am in China again,

on those shiny nights, when red lanterns glowed in a row from the eaves,

and little clay jugs emptied of liquor lined the papered windowpanes,

picking the meat from what may be cat bones,

because they are curved. When I take the amber from my ears,

the gold, the 17 jewel movement from my wrist,

who am I then? The need increases. The thrust

of your wrist when you make a point, gestures fly through warm

smoky air within: but outside all is frozen

in icy mist. When I walked through markets

they’d shake at me the purple-skinned chickens

that are good for anemia, hawk in guttural words

vegetables I didn’t know the names of — I couldn’t

ask for anything. The tiger-shaped shoes for children

were the size of tangerines; the Mongolians in costume

nudged me and showed fancy daggers, crusted hilts

in the vicinity of the art school, where from the earliest days

the students sat in their coats in the cafeteria

with shining eyes, bony wrists, over bowls of congee in the morning.

I can not sever it from me,

and I know that I will want you,

the way I have never stopped wanting.

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