theme, right to left

No matter how hard I try, I cannot see the shards as a beginning. The sun rising. I know the sun does not move and it is the earth turning, but how the sun creeps up, how it alters the universe every fifteen minutes in increments, up and up the fat spill of rosiness. On the other hand, I can easily imagine the urn shards assembling back into an urn, having seen many such visual sleights: the photograph is an example. What I cannot believe is the pieces existing without the urn in mind. That they can each stand constitutionally. I believe that they are somehow embedded. That destined forms win out in the end. That clouds of dust and pebbles were fated to form

this planet, accreted
with such violence that
some warmth of the dirt
I pat on my hands
and knees comes
from that collapse
or is it relapse into whole-
ness, a cataclysm that
launches the body up

to the man waiting
to catch it. See how he holds
on, how he holds. Here,
at the end, he stands
with had-been-shards
and a smooth emptiness
existing both outside and in-
(dark fist of space, elbow deep)
side, an ordinal emptiness
after everything, patient
for that snap-back-into-time
feeling, as at the end of a film
the eviction notice shown to all
of us: The End.

variation 1

The curved piece on the floor is
Vivien Leigh’s cheek
in Waterloo Bridge.
It lies there, a melody
without its words. All
Shanghai learned
that theme,
an old Scottish
tune. My mother hummed it
but how could she know
what it sang? The wordless
piece, like a body without
a soul: only the body is left.

Thirty centuries ago, they
etched words onto palm-
sized turtle shells. They
put hot metal against the bone,
because the way the corporeal broke
was a kind of language. They
said: There will be no disasters
in the next ten days and
waited for it to be true.
They are gone, and only
the body is left.

That piece could be a suitcase
full of clothing and books.
When a body comes to a new
shore, it does not carry any
accoutrements of thought
or tongue. All that is tonnage.
It is only a body with suitcases.
A body is where
possession begins and
ends. Wind scrapes up
smokestacks of ships,
the airplane empennage.
On this shore, after the landing,
only the body is left.

variation 2, mirror fugue

Fact of all sentient beings suffering. Fact of sentience
without suffering (rare). Fact of sentience after suffering
or in spite of or during or only during. Avalokiteśvara
holds up his hands above the pottery shards scattered
like rats

Fact that anesthesia blocks out sentience. Fact that I
tried to anesthetize laboratory animal subjects before
their euthanasia. Fact that this was not allowed. Fact
that I was wrong that it would help. The use of iso-
flurane induction prior to carbon dioxide euthanasia
significantly increased both behavioral and neuro-
molecular signs of stress. Fact of a body heaving like
a whole hand opening and closing into a fist. Fact of
suffocated mouth like the urn’s dark throat pasted
in air

Fact that I bear an essential fiction. Fact of my
most essential fiction. Fact pressing against fiction
which accommodates like flesh. Fact pressing in.
Fact revealed to be more fiction (i.e. of being human). Fact
that I need suffering to survive and that true statements have true contrapositives:

if nothing suffers, then I do not
survive. If a fact can be revoked as
the familiar touch can be revoked,
then it was never a fact (I knew what
I was

once) (did I really?) (fact that I must
unclaim unhold

drop) (from my hands)

variation 3, mirror fugue

om or hom
distrust
ready interest
hungry for
the shards
shameful smile
a neck on

your heritage
has exhausted
useless to love
body is real
like a hex
commerce
cells

home hom
gust of wind
hoveled shard
whom we
always settle convex
of being broken
display for whom

what is the use
learn what is useful
what is use
everything was
made of cells
useless culture
use or cull

lily of hom
uncular whole all
distance
appointed
down curve
disappointed half
convex wound

every hexagram
learn what is real
usury is every love
waste your time
muse or use
a cull
shards

variation 4

Splashed milk. Fresh
clay scraped from its buff
is kneaded with water
for plasticity. Naturally
rusted with dirt’s iron,
like blood ribboning
a first-time mother’s pump.
Thrown into shape,

bone-dried for firing.
Its molecular lattices—
tents of silica-in-oxygen—
arrange in stacked rows
like communion wafers.
Each two start erasing
their seam the way lovers
do. Each smears the other’s
skin. This is how the
mortal burns away. This
is perfect order:

a shell. Open mouthed,
hungry enough to fit the entire
dark. Its skin is spark dry.
The firing is stopped,
the ware is cooled.
It does not return
to clay. It does not work
like that. It is like the body
a mother once thought
could be pushed back
into the womb and
would come back alive.

variation 5, inverted counterpoint

What was the sound of its breaking
What will be the sound of its breaking
as in the laboratory we cover the cages
so they do not see it but they hear
clearly

The red thread was still around my ankle
I was still nine when I came back from seeing
my mother’s grandmother and boy was she old
I knew I would not see her again because she was so old
and my grandmother my mother and
It falls through me falls fallingly
little sinkhole into forever

Many years later and elsewhere eyes
meeting mine after the botched surgery
she lifted her mouse eyes for it was a mouse
the mouse lifted her thumb of a face to look and I met her eyes
before I needed to gas her because of because of mercy
which means converting to nonliving nonsuffering
red thread snapped it was long ago okay
it was long ago

poetry-magazineOn Ai Weiwei’s “Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn”

poetry-magazineOn Ai Weiwei’s “Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn”

poetry-magazineTheme and Variations on Ai Weiwei’s “Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn”

On Ai Weiwei’s “Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn”

On Ai Weiwei’s “Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn”

Theme and Variations on Ai Weiwei’s “Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn”