A Hanging Screen

“In warm sunlight jade engenders smoke”; poetry, like indigo mountain, keeps its distance; the light plays words and figures, stone’s edge edged with air, green haze growing. Amused by butterflies, Chuang Tsu dreaming, the emperor’s heart in spring, thoroughly transformed. Still, in pieces, the words rest so much apart. Risking my life I lean on dangerous railings. When the dream wakes to its own particulars, the strands scattered, loose hair on muslin, broken characters the reeds make, unmake— vague    no reason bright    again    dark—