Shearsman 58: Trevor Joyce: 4 Poems from the Chinese of Ruan Ji (2)

Shearsman 58

Trevor Joyce

Two Poems from the Chinese of Ruan Ji

66

Polar
    cold
        marks terminus;
escape,
    even by ocean,
        has its end.

Our sun
    gone out,
        we stand
alone
    benighted
        and unkinged.

Better
    tend
        orchard
than forever
    watch
        your back,

yet see:
    even the vulgar
        sparrow
sits
    in someone’s
        sights.

In a trice
    power slips
        the grasp;
armed men
    defile
        the grave.

Now loyalty’s
    exemplars
        are all dead,
tears
    cancel
        face.

Give me
    a purebred
        from the riverlands,
let me
    traverse
        my range.

70

We, all impassioned,
    suffer
        grief;
feel no
    passions, know
        no grief.

If not already
    snarled,
        why covet
further
    traps
        and goods?

Minor
    vortices
        approach
the utter
    limits of
        the atmosphere;

in light
    the rain
        -bow
glitters
    and grows
        parched.

Heart
    to ash
        exhausted
settles
    in a ruined
        house.

Say, why
    should I
        experience
nostalgia
    for the forms
        of men?

How,
    rid now
        of all familiar
fixes,
    slough
        my self?

Trevor Joyce lives in Cork, Ireland. The second edition of his Collected Poems, titled with the first dream of fire they hunt the cold, was published by Shearsman Books in the UK and USA, and by New Writer's Press in Ireland in November 2003. Two chapbooks, Take Over and Undone Say have also recently been published by The Gig in Toronto. He was awarded a Fulbright scholarship in 2002-3, and in 2004 was elected a member of Aosdána (akin to the Académie Française, but restricted to creative artists).