/ Three Chapters on Dusk
1991
1
Clouds send dust drifting off the high-up cranes
crows fly into the immense Russian vestibule
the setting sun repeats itself: beauty, it is in concert with dreams
morning rays unfold against the street, please don’t roll up your sleeves to scrub it away
please, please do not ask me why
I am leaving the light of dawn
someone disappears in a crowd
everyone looks for him
to wish him the best
a gradual tune flies out the chapel’s stained window
around psyche’s edges a desolate prospect
this is the eighth dawn of autumn
a grouse plucks its feathers, lovers gaze across the river
a razor passed to the hand of a son
2
Look to the mountains, look to the houses under the mountains
look to life’s last station
when the long-deceased song passes on again and red Persian asters
assemble in the distance, like a chorus of birds
reigniting an internal landscape
you will look to the first leaf falling in the mountains
oh, the land of autumn growing late
plains push out from the edge of the city
mountains lift up at the edge of the plains
in the heights greeting mountains —
skylights or arching bridge floors —
sunlight caresses the hand of the dead
their white shadows quiver
and your bones are cold; within the grand shadows
a cold wind has been blowing for years
3
Evening blown in on the wind, rattling windows and doors
in a headwind of autumn
I see aberrant turrets, lamps, and squares
like I’d only happened on this evening
a happening of people running through a meadow, a happenstance mindset
hearing a blind man’s haphazard fiddle
evening blown in on the wind rattling souls
how many faces vie to appear, then hurry away hiding
only a pigeon milk white breast glimmers in the wind
I hear music
coming from the psyche’s depths
submitting to its guidance, recollecting in the dark
a ray of light, we become history
that page has been turned
I will write a poem of perfect beauty
I will raise a child of perfect goodness
1991
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