daydreaming w/ Bob Arnold
Ultimatum
If I forget one character a day,
I will have forgotten Chinese
by the end of 2042.
Sooner or later I will forget
my quarrel with my father,
I will forget if
I ever wrote to you.
And the new language
I will have acquired
will not be the same
as the one that bit me.
____________________
Motherlands
Weijia Pan
Milkweed Editions
2023
A collection of ten new poems
_________________
Anthem
It was the most exciting country in the modern age. It had
mountains and rivers and cities and towns and villages and prairies
and canyons and dead ends and avenues and broadways and even
a sunset strip. A Big Muddy. It was an empire, and a folk song, and
a parade. A myriad of languages and skin color and appearances.
It had been away in world wars and bombed and also been bombed
upon, millions had died and also been born. The sun came up, the
sun went down. Stars at night overlooked all of it. Nothing was
spared. It was working, not perfectly, which is what made every
day involving. If the land was perfect, the sun and moon and stars
wouldn't have been needed. They came to help. All the people had
to do was also help themselves, and one another. It was already
there the way each person was made with two legs and two arms
and hands and two ears and eyes and a mouth that could talk. The
ability to talk! Animals couldn't talk but the people could talk to the
animals, they could talk to anything. To themselves, to a stranger, to
a loved one, while wandering lost in the woods. You are never lost
because you can talk. Until that day you refuse to talk and instead
you lie, which isn't talk, but backward words. And one comes and
lies and then another sees that easy advantage and they lie and soon
a room is lying, a whole building, all the town, into the bright lights
of the cities and soon lies sweep across the prairies. In less time than
you think everything that was working well, is now broken. A vast
majority have decided broken, somehow, is best. There are millions
of people who will now take over and lead this broken existence. In
basic electronics it is called a loose wire. Left to its own devices, it
will burn a house down.
~ Bob Arnold
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from The Book of Questions
Why don't the immense airplanes
fly around with their children?
Which yellow bird
fills its nest with lemons?
Why don't they train helicopters
to suck honey from the sunlight?
Where did the full moon leave
its sack of flour tonight?
Is it true that voluptuous crocodiles
live only in Australia?
How do the oranges divide up
sunlight in the orange tree?
Did salt's teeth come
from a bitter mouth?
Is it true that a black condor
flies at night over my country?
Whom can I ask what I came
to make happen in this world?
Why do I move without wanting to,
why am I not able to sit still?
Why do I go rolling without wheels,
flying without wings or feathers,
and why did I decide to migrate
if my bones live in Chile?
And why is the sun such a bad companion
to the traveler's in the desert?
And why is the sun so congenial
in the hospital garden?
Are they birds or fish
in these nets of moonlight?
Was it where they lost me
that I finally found myself?
Why was I not born mysterious?
Why did I grow up without companions?
Who ordered me to tear down
the doors of my own pride?
And who went out to live for me
when I was sleeping or sick?
And which flag unfurled there
where they didn't forget me?
Can you love me, syllabary,
and give me a meaningful kiss?
Is a dictionary a sepulchre
or a sealed honeycomb?
In which window did I remain
watching buried time?
Or is what I see from afar
what I have not yet lived?
_________________________
Pablo Neruda
The Book of Questions
translated by William O'Daly
Copper Canyon Press, 2001
