for Ho Shin Tzu, who returned
It's the beginning of a life, one by one
The faces emerge from pearly brilliance.
Each, as full and red as a new sun,
Redly shines with solar ebulliance.
They come and go, babbling without sense
In a speeding flicker of darkness and light.
To begin with, it's a matter of suspense
How the words dart and flash &ndash but then they bite.
The growing mouth, delighted, bites back:
The piranha-deadly game of calling names
Has begun. The faces fade and grow slack,
Are supplanted by conceptual frames
Of reference, stripped to the intellectual bone.
This is normal. Nothing simple or direct,
Nothing sap-filled or fleshy or stone
Will be able for years to connect.
But at last the fine structures dissipate,
There are gaps, voracious black holes
Swallow down the skeleton, and great
Gouts of nothing clog the memory and the soul.
Out of darkness, the faces return,
Brightly at first, but the old fires
Are wearying, fade visibly as they burn.
The babble less. Their strange warmth conspires
An inconsolable sorrow. Far away
Their slow low murmur and pale radiance
Shimmer, gently drift and sway,
Drown once more into brilliance.
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