DESMOND KON YISHǑU-ZHETIAN

hart crane after a heart-to-heart

I am not a young poet like I keep saying; why do I keep denying time, mouthing insight
near complete as if new space bought me such ostentation? I was never lavaliere-ornate
      but coming here makes me seem impossible, deus est suum esse deus a se; how I love
writing that speaks none, an arjuna aghast, hundred-acre ghosts excavated not so ancient
      the writing ignores the voice immediately, precisely because it is immediate; I will die
I tell rilke in his sky; what blue, what blue-eyed turquoise is his blue? can you see blue
that far away, deus est suum esse deus a se? I have no home like rilke; he too despised
walls, more attempts to do, and even numbers closing in on him; he was rained in clean
into spaces; I like his fifth letter, field technique, our human past a concision, a widow
      a mite; and the stone basins he loves, wide spacious pools; he must love ringneck doves
their flock of arms, limbs lowered, descent of feet, bellies, fangs; a god stilling, vaned
into cool water on his forehead; rilke too found himself through time deus absconditus;
      if I don’t die, I will caster letters to another; now that I’ve found a sable poet, I’m given
a red journal of sonnets, its hidden middles and totalities, valentine pen in it, neither sober;
      he has filled thirty pages, a little more than his age; he is not a lover but how he recites
how he redacts remembered poetry; he loves auden too but he hates mallarmé; he adores
      stein but doesn’t know trakl; “read stephen crane, then stevens,” he suggested pro nobis
deus est suum esse deus a se is his scansion, my poetry a bijou, as he kicks his right boot
over his left thigh; it dangles like him, pale ideas a waft, a wave of an old consciousness
      he craves a eucharist where people queue for cornbread and ketchup; he’s poor but thinks
he dresses well; he’s poor but thinks it keeps him sane; he’s a writer too, the same outcry
his drawer of letters a mild pain; I don’t love him but I love his love, his love for words
that alone is love; one day, I’ll get to see his library, its books aglow, my krishna gilded