'Lighter than a feather'

I

His voice was a broken tile
in a classical setting,
a clay edge grating against sky.

Now his silence speaks to
the classified space
in the front of the square.


II

A man in a corduroy hat is spinning
over the sea. Gu Cheng,
feeling light with a poem.

This was in the early days when,
the glaze not yet dry,
he would sit watching sharp

incredible outlines
rise out of the harbour
needing such a harbour

to displace waves
of pale terracotta branded with
the tight stamp of a seal.

Did he think he was like
Any young man clearing out a pigsty
Or a property?

He was his mother's obstinate child.


III

He left behind a set of graded bells.

He left behind
the slow build of stories,
tiles placed across the centuries,

each one taking off diagonally
from the one before.

His pain trickled down
through the floor boards.

Though he left with a poem
in his arms, he left
behind too much.


IV

Now he's lighter than a feather,
less material than snow.

In the Duke's hunting lodge
the stories fall in cryptic patterns

Cold blows the north wind,
Thick falls the snow.
Take my hand and go, love

Until the striped deer is back
With its scholars and poets gather
in the garden once more.

	-- Diana Bridge