Chinese Quatrains (The Woman in Tomb 44)

The aeroplane is shaped like a bird Or a giant mechanical penis My father escorts my mother From girlhood to unhappiness A dragonfly has iridescent wings Shorn, it’s a lowly pismire Plucked of arms and legs A throbbing red pepperpod Baby, she’s a girl Pinkly propped as a doll Baby, she’s a pearl An ulcer in the oyster of God Cry little baby clam cry The steam has opened your eyes Your secret darkly hidden The razor is sharpening the knife Abandoned taro-leaf boat Its lonely black sail broken The corpses are fat and bejeweled The hull is thoroughly rotten The worm has entered the ear And out the nose of my father Cleaned the pelvis of my mother And ringed around her fingerbone One child beats a bedpan One beats a fishhook out of wire One beats his half sister on the head Oh, teach us to fish and love Don’t say her boudoir is too narrow She could sleep but in one cold bed Don’t say you own many horses We escaped on her skinny mare’s back Man is good said Meng-Tzu We must cultivate their natures Man is evil said Hsun-Tzu There’s a worm in the human heart He gleaned a beaded purse from Hong Kong He procured an oval fan from Taiwan She married him for a green card He abandoned her for a blonde My grandmother is calling her goslings My mother is summoning her hens The sun has vanished into the ocean The moon has drowned in the fen Discs of jade for her eyelids A lozenge of pearl for her throat Lapis and kudzu in her nostrils They will rob her again and again