I Love a Broad Margin to My Life (14 page)

Wittman, son, brother, imaginary friend,

I need you. Help me again. Go

up Sky Mountain. Here, I’ll

unwind for you a ribbon of rainbow silk

scrolling into golden desert. Walk

upon it with men in burnooses and women in burkas,

colors blowing and flapping, and camels swaying

and swinging bells, heading toward cities

and mirages of cities. The oasis that gives you

haven is Basra, the air station and naval

base. Basra, home of Sinbad the Sailor,

and before that, the Garden of Eden.

Please stand on a roadside, and hold

the Bell of Peace, a golden bowl, on

your proffering hand, and think this thought:

“Body, speech, and mind in perfect oneness,

I send my heart along with the sound of this bell.

May all the hearers awaken from forgetfulness,

and transcend the path of anxiety and sorrow.”

Touch bell stick to bell, warming it,

breathe in, breathe out, then make one

sure stroke. The ring changes the air.

The ring rings through din. The din

stills. The ring makes silence all

around, all around. Explosions cease.

Bombardment ends. Combatants

stop to enjoy the sound of Buddha’s voice.

The ring gathers time into one moment

of peace. Which is torn by engine noise

from a light, white aircraft, like an insect,

a whitefly. A drone. A hunter-killer drone.

Yell at it, “Coward! Coward!” We are cowards,

killing without facing those we kill,

without giving our victims a chance at us.

Yell “Coward” up at the drone,

then turn toward the air base and yell

at it, “Coward! Coward! Coward! Coward!”

Your voice carries all the way to Virginia,

where the computer specialist is pressing the buttons.

He hears you, wakes up, stops warring.

Thank you, Wittman. Now go

continue on the Silk Road all the way

to its other end, in Soglio, where Taña awaits you.

It’s Taña! My own dear wife.

Rush into each other’s arms. Home.

No rancor. No ambivalence.

“I saw you constantly. I saw you everywhere.”

True, blondes everywhere—Chinese

with yellow hair, natural and chemical—each

one startling—it’s Taña. My heart leapt.

My heart fell—it wasn’t you. “Welcome, Love.

Welcome back.” The red string holds.

Hand in hand, the dear forever married

walk through the piazza with the bell tower,

and into the snow-topped mountains, stand

for a time on the Soglio mesa, and breathe

the good air between sky and far-down

chestnut forests. Rilke, who walked here,

advised, Change your life. Then westward

home, where Mario, one and only son,

has met his one true love, Anh Lan.

Please, no arguing, live happily ever after.

A long time has passed since I began

the journey of this poem. Poetry, which makes

immortality and eternity, did not stop

time. In 4 years real time:

MY DEAD

John Mulligan

Grace Paley

Pat Haines

Aunt Wai Ying Chew Lam

John Gregory Dunne and Quintana Roo

Ralph Swentzell

Jade Snow Wong

Vera Fessler

Irene Takei Miura

Roger Long

Pham Tiến Duât

Roger Allsop

Carole Koda

Alyssa Merchant

John Griffin

Sandy Taylor

Ena Gibson

Stella Jue

Glenn Kawahara

Gene Frumkin

George Carlin

Guanfu Guo

Col. Kenneth En Yin Ching

Bob Winkley

Oakley Hall

Capitano

Marion Perkins

Kazuko Onodera

Laura Evelia Pérez-Arce Dávalos

Kristi Rudolph

Lawrence William Smith

Ardavan Daravan

Ian and Susan MacMillan

Michael Rossman

Auntie Nona Beamer

John Leonard

Eartha Kitt

Jim Houston

Mike Porcella

Ron Takaki

Eng Lay Dai Gwoo

Jerry Josephs

Naomi Gibson

Roy Colombe

Lucille Clifton

Dorothy Langley Hoge

Tom Pigford

Archie Spencer

Howard Zinn

Donovan Cummings

Henry Vallejo

Gloria Marie Bingesser Beckwith

Graham Nicholson

Charles Muscatine

Janet Adelman

Larry Feinberg

Jadin Wong

Ray Dracker

Jack Larson

Each one who dies, I want to go with you.

I feel your pull into death.

I want to join my dead.

I have broken the news that Fa Mook Lan

killed herself. Everyone who hears denies

that it happened. No. How? Why?

The woman soldier comes home from battle;

her child does not recognize his mother.

He cries at sight of her; he runs away from her.

Why not give up on life?

I found evidence, as scholars know evidence,

of how Fa Mook Lan died.

I was at a conference welcoming to Notre Dame

Bei Dao, the poet who wrote

a ritual for ending a thousand-year war.

The people kneel at an abandoned stone quarry,

and fly 50 paper hawks. In a footnote

of a paper entitled “A Poetic Lesson,”

I read that Fa Mook Lan killed

herself by hanging; she refused the emperor’s

order that she become one of his wives.

The source cited was the P.R.C.’s

National Tourism Administration.

1998. Her hanging

may be revisionist history;

governments have trouble acknowledging P.T.S.D.

Why not give up on life?

Why continue to live?

I make up reasons why live on:

1. Kill myself, and I set a bad example

to children and everyone who knows me.

2. I will die deliberately, as Thoreau lived

deliberately. I live nonviolently. So I shall not

kill myself by hanging or sword. If up

to me, I’ll die by helium, and be awake during

the transition, like a Tibetan, who dies with eyes open.

3. I have one more task to do—

translate and publish Father’s poems.

In the tradition of poet answering poet,

BaBa wrote in the margins of my books.

With help from a scholar and the dictionary,

I’m able to read and hereby translate

his 19th song for barbarian reed pipe:

I can hear Mong Guo playing their music.

My horse sings a sad song in concert.

Some of those strange people are singing words;

some are playing instruments that double as

weapons, flutes to arrows, lyres to crossbows.

I can hear their voices outside

great walls. They are aliens to me,

though I am among / one of them. Alone.

But BaBa did not write “I.”

The old poets did not write “I.”

Hear Mong Guo playing their music.

Horse sings a sad song …

Hear their voices outside great walls …

They are aliens …

Among them, one alone.

But how be alone unless “I”? How

be lonely with you-understood alongside?

How be American unless “I”? Crossing

languages, crossing the sky of life and death,

Daughter will help Father.
I
am barbarian

who sings strange words. BaBa,

we’ll show them, the academics who

can find no literature of South China.

We’ll write dialect older and more tones

than Mandarin and Beijing. BaBa’s

name-in-poetry is Lazy Old Man.

He was lucky, he got old.

He was wealthy with time,

to do nothing, to be poet.

4. Toward the end of her life, living alone,

MaMa accidently locked

herself out of the house, and spent the winter

night outside. She wrapped the old

dog blanket around herself, but could not

sleep. She walked around and around the house;

she tried lying down in various places

on the ground. She got up, and walked to the front

yard—and saw Kuan Yin on the porch.

The house looked like a resplendent altar; the porch

railings were altar rails. Kuan Yin was

watering the flowers and plants that adorned like spring,

red red green green. She stood

at the top of the stairs, and saw my mother. MaMa

knelt on the cement, and was warm with joy and beauty

and delight. Many many children came.

Kuan Yin and MaMa walked

among them, touching them on their bald heads.

When we found her, she was asleep

on the porch in a spot of morning sun.

5. I have the ability to sense love—it comes

from ancestors and family and sanghas of friends.

I am able to feel love from afar and ages ago.

6. Learn the patience to listen to music. Music

arranges time. Can’t hurry listening.

I resolve to dance the Memorial Day

Carnaval in the Mission when I am 70.

7. I will have free time. I have never

had free time. I will have time to give away.

I regret always writing, writing. I gave

my kid the whole plastic bag of marshmallows,

so I could have 20 minutes to write.

I sat at my mother’s deathbed, writing.

I did swab her mouth with water, and feel

her pliant tongue enjoy water, then harden

and die. Before I had language,

before I had stories, I wanted to write.

That desire is going away.

I’ve said what I have to say.

I’ll stop, and look at things I called

distractions. Become reader of the world,

no more writer of it. Surely, world

lives without me having to mind it.

A surprise world! When I complete

this sentence, I shall begin taking

my sweet time to love the moment-to-moment

beauty of everything. Every one. Enow.

ah
—an honorific or vocative syllable, used in front of names, like “san” following names in Japanese

ahn
—peace

‘aina
—land, earth

aiya
—an interjection vocalized to express amazement, pain, sorrow—any emotion, large or small

aloha kākou
—“May there be love including all of us.”

‘ama‘ama
—mullet fish

aswang
—an evil vampirelike creature living in the Philippines

‘aumākua
—totem animal; a familiar; an ancestor deified in the form of an animal

auwe
—an interjection vocalized to express amazement, pain, sorrow—any emotion, large or small

aw
—a sound made at the end of a sentence indicating a question

Ba T’ien Ma Day
—“Father Sky Mother Earth”;
Ba Tiān Ma Di
in Mandarin

big family
—everybody,
tout le monde

bow
—bun, sweet or savory

casita
—little house

daw jeah; daw jay; dough zheh
—“many thanks,” in various dialects

deem
—to judge, to ransom (in English); to mark, to consider (in Chinese)

dui
—agree, match, aligned, paired

enow
—enough

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,

A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread,—and Thou

Beside me singing in the Wilderness—

Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

—
OMAR KHAYYAM

enso
—circle, symbolizing the moment, the all, enlightenment, emptiness

este grupo, ese grupo
—this group, that group

fawn
—play

fawn (different ideogram from above
)—cooked rice

feng shui
—wind water

fu
—human, bitter, tiger, pants, wolf’s bane, or father, depending on tone

fu ngoy
—fermented tofu

gaw
—elder brother

goak goong
—bow, obeisance (literally: nourish, cherish grandfather)

goong
—grandfather

hai
—yes

haole
—white person; formerly, any foreigner

hapa
—person of mixed blood; fraction

ho
—good, very;
hao
in Mandarin

ho chau
—very mean, most unkind

ho chun
—very related

ho kin
—good seeing you; well met

hola; ho, la
—hello; good

ho’ohaole
—to act like a white person

ho sun
—good morning, good body, strongly believe, or good letter, depending on tones and context

huang dai
—king (literally: yellow emperor)

hui
—club, organization, association, society, band, team, troupe, league, firm, union, company, alliance

hun
—regret, yearn, longing, hungry for

inmigrante
—immigrant

jawk
—capture

jeah jeah; je je; jeh jeh
—“thanks thanks,” in various dialects

je je nay; je je nee
—“thank you,” in various dialects

jing ho
—to make good, to fix

joong
—tamale, but wrapped with ti or banana or bamboo leaves rather than corn husks

joy kin; joy keen
—
au revoir, auf Wiedersehen;
“zaijian,” in village dialects

kuleana
—responsibility, right, business, property, province, privilege, authority

kuleana hana
—responsibilities on the job

kung
—work, achievement; the time it takes in doing a piece of work

la; lah; law
—a pleasant sound made at the end of a sentence

La Dona Guerrera
—the Woman Warrior

la inmigración
—immigration

lai
—come

lan
—orchid

las madres y las comadres
—the mothers and godmothers

lei see
—red packet of money (literally: come be), traditionally spelled
lai see

lei see dai gut
—gift of big luck, traditionally spelled
lai see dai gut

li
—tradition, rites, good manners: