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Poetry

	Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé
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Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé, 12 june 2012

for the constants of hokku

today big credo
not this leaf moment, white, washed
out, fragment visit

not the eclipse, pitch, pivot
when you look away, thistlepD

not this, modern rust
avenue talk to built crowd
loud and backed and stone

alone, ice, gin, eyes, ajar
pebble in paper, cupboard

not that, still life, sink
you in slip of pink, above
this ribbon city

but for memory, not now
cerise, kitchen, tile, dislodged

but today, return
unsaid the misshaping red
not landlocked and lips

are the whole pictures spinning?
prolix yet moving items

* This poem first appeared in the journal, "Scholars and Rogues".

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Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé, 12 june 2012

two sonnets and starlings in a cluster

i.

near this gate,walk in procession
orange sand in front, in a crystallized state
sandals in a single row, in a single line
in a hurry this sandfly, eager desire
in line with recollection, if possible no more blood
if possible, a manipur bush quail
in sandalwood, fully mottled in front
a sandbank, an open stage, walls of pali and sanskrit
yogesvara and ibn arabi in a daydream
a greenery of many types, of a long past
of the same sound and movement –
in front a love spell, from long ago
as tentative and bold, as insistent
as the starlings gathering, scattered grain

ii.

love ties like henna, lifted inside, out
where? where? there, in the vial –
there, an act, an air pocket
an orange-faced orchid ignored
hard petals ready to break off like a choka
as light a sea breeze, as light-footed
this remembrance, sandbar walk for basho
yesterday’s dream, glimpse of ikebana alike
handwriting as arranged, fingerprinted name
hovering in the air, in gilded layers in front
the gold ornament, her bridal forehead
as clean a face, as removed of feeling
to look down at the dust and ground
the northern pintail, wings clipped to its back

* This poem first appeared in "Sunrise From Blue Thunder: A Pirene's Fountain Anthology For Japan's Earthquake-Tsunami Relief".

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Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé, 12 june 2012

nihil obstat?

read and prophesy, he said; patrick white, joyride nor sorry astride —
of a juniper berry and clove-wing heart, cradled in pink coral from the reef
of his weathered eyes and rescue and leaving — that solitary line a bouts-rimés

what desert-fat(er-figural nothings;
but bobbing whispers, no wheel
the triple-nozzled lamp filled to its brim
and eventually, his backward glance and sigh

* This poem first appeared in the literary journal "Dear Sir". Its title, “nihil obstat?”, meaning “nothing stands in the way” in Latin, was written after I encountered White’s 1976 novel, A Fringe of Leaves. This poem is a novel-to-poem idiomatic/ekphrastic translation that experiments with hybridity and transformation, in an attempt to explore the difficulties of textual equivalence.

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Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé, 12 june 2012

holy noise, etchings / across this year’s chinese garden

excitation à la mode, an applied form
spirits on the move
high water;
vibrations in a pursuit; a persuasion
a displacement of this type, static, charted
internal; a sensation, an oscillation

of functions now frequented
wholly
by the ancestral
pumps / chains / pulleys / turbines
a sudden wave, velocity;
it is time —
amoral exemplar gone,
quaker belts and springs

*******

on bourne bridge:

what did the boreal owls say?
what did the number indices say?
what did they say about wuwei?

the water running
and half the world
and afraid to fall in love;

the case histories, for example
a conversion chart

* This poem first appeared in the literary journal "Dear Sir". It was written as an ekphrastic quasi-transliterative response to a poem by Murari about Mt. Kailasa, described in Sanskrit Poetry From Vidyakara’s “Treasury” (trans. Daniel H. H. Ingalls) as “one of the peaks of the Himalaya, which is said to rise as high as or higher than the sun’s orbit… important as the dwelling place of Siva and Parvati”. I began this poem seated at the stone boat and tea house at The Chinese Garden in Singapore, a visit I had not made in more than 25 years.

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Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé, 11 june 2012

casualism is a kuhi in the water

small life is beyond
mention, or examination –

the bald eagle mats its fur
relief of gold flare
bold starburst, a prominence

down the steps is an alley

today’s west feeling
like broken nails, storm door
brass hinges undone

up the steps is a garden

chance the ascent two by two
wall fountains at back
and behind them, a coach box

its sacred heart and secrets

belief like lost sound
how is the truth to be said?
believe me, monday

believe me, monday
this morning like that friday

mother coiling, silent wings

* The line is taken from Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem “The Mother”. This poem was written as a response to and reflection on Brooks’ recording of the poem. It first appeared in the anthology "Writings from the Heart: Stories and Poems from Around the World".

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Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé, 10 june 2012

Little Girl’s Antistrophe at 27 Rue de Fleures

Just now, I unwrapped her box of letters. Gertrude was an iconoclast
to her gravitas. What she did not know she let travel, recurrence
of rhymes like falling leaves buffeting, autumn breeze from East Side.
Gertrude did not know home tonight or home in the summer.
By the Hudson. Did not know pudding from sauce from Helfgott’s letters.

Its mention of parlor poetry as dried hydrangea as pastoral,
as another Gothic point of view. As the bird feeder broke into two,
as freer roads after the scuttling, as prying apart the living architectonics.
Like her piano rolled down the stairs. Of play and vinaigrette
and too much cayenne. That the Tribune was the Tribune after all.

But also a need and problem within the chronic hours.
Gertrude did not know the object beyond the object.
Beyond the waterfowl, a duck of oval, of beak and weathervane wing,
of zipper heart, and an accordion tongue. Gertrude did not know
where to put the centre of things. Gertrude did not soak Henry’s cloak.

Nor Mildred’s, its hem another herringbone stitch another section
not whole enough or wholehearted or wholemeal enough.
The whole world was no longer a lazy afternoon or abiding love,
an old Gertrude looking at herself in the mirror of the ponding water.
Her head taking the shape of the barn, its shadow a black soot.

In midday sun, quiet afternoon cradling itself into the moonless night.
Gertrude was earnest in losing things — the beat-up rosebush
one more variation, foot divisions misaligned, word endings falling
over each other, frothy tumble. Gertrude’s diaeresis, Alice in a deep sleep,
the lean and fallow years from that trembling point onwards.

Gertrude’s dactylic dimeter drumming itself into the hexameter,
a twist as with the helix, as with rollercoaster feelings
when affectations run wild, when The Salon levitated
into The Cloud of Unknowing, its noetic white as wispy and dissolving.
Then a removal so she would always ask more questions.

As supple as her very last. Gertrude’s Sunday clatter in another suite
to rile Chaucer, even in death, even in love from a distance.
Even in wise restraint and a portrait left in the dark, its phonic echoes
a new refrain of face and facet. And fractured verseforms.
Gertrude’s sudden awakening to sovereignty’s shining eye.

Not decadence but wonderment. Not meaninglessness but a prayer,
a detachment and reasoned feeling. A small run of sounds and pictures.
Of a sapling writing out its unknown destination, its basis
and other evidence scaffolding, relaxed into a vine far down the road.
In the vineyard, a redder rose held out in the palm of her hand.

* This poem is a reprint. It was first anthologized as the winner of the Stepping Stones Nigeria Poetry Prize.

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Other poems: The Object of White Noise: The Oak Park Sestina, a haiku is diego velázquez at home, for the constants of hokku, two sonnets and starlings in a cluster, nihil obstat?, holy noise, etchings / across this year’s chinese garden, casualism is a kuhi in the water, The Villanelle’s Window, Fluxus at Chelsea, Gertrude Stein’s Agnosia, this sky and its soft position and release, Horseshoe: A Sestina, Ut Pictura Poesis, White Tower of Thessaloniki, Tangential: A Movement in Two Sonnets, Little Girl’s Antistrophe at 27 Rue de Fleures,

Latest items:

Poetry

for the constants of hokku

two sonnets and starlings in a cluster

nihil obstat?

holy noise, etchings / across this year’s chinese garden

casualism is a kuhi in the water

Little Girl’s Antistrophe at 27 Rue de Fleures

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