Penelope Shuttle
Looking at the Cloud
One minute the cloud
is a profile of the humourist
Erasmus,
the next,
discarded work
of a dozen goldsmiths
You could build a harmonious society
beginning
with this
cloud
trailing across half the morning sky
like the girl
with the longest hair
in China,
or the outspread tails
of the four hundred peacocks
in Gardener Wang's garden
in Jiangsa Province -
After an hour of looking at
the cloud
I understand why
so many young Shanghainese
like pretending
to be strangers on phonecalls -
If people in Shanghai
don't mind,
why should I?
The cloud darkens,
like a thought
of Piero di Cosimo
A woman in Shenzhen City
kills herself
because her wedding is postponed
The cloud lightens
to a mile-long silver hand
of an angel
with his feet firmly
in the cooking pot
The cloud takes a pinch of moss
from a hoopoe's nest,
shins down a ladder
at the back of the sky,
brings me an incomprehensible message
from the people of Leptis Magna -
goes off in huff
to build a menstruation hut
or a fox temple
(Can't make up my mind!)
Cloud - get real - just do your job,
simplify or magnify
Light
Bow down
before The Wind Of One Hundred and Twenty Days,
put your child hand
into the sun's furnace,
show us what you're made of - |
