Birgit Bunzel Linder

Today we walked out of our dream
to sit on the brown bench again,
right across the bare white rocks
that soften the sea.
...

In the middle of every night,
the moon’s noise wakes me.
I hear water everywhere.
...

I, Too, Sing This Country

It wakes me every hour—
On a strict schedule
...

I read it like wine
I recite it like dance
I pirouette around stanzas
I exhale a caesura
...

We prepare for the cemetery when
dew has turned to rain to frost to hail.
At season’s infancy, they say.
Jittery trees line our cobbled streets,
...

When Mr Armstrong stepped
onto the moon, it was 1969.
That was also the year
when we mastered our deafness.
...

Titmice and sparrows flock for food at dusk
Farewells hang in the air like lanterns

Hoarfrost weaves over black bark
...

Twelve Taoist novices
Walk along the hillside road.

Twelve topknots popping up and down
...

Birds are beaded straight on the wire
They gaze into the brewing sky
Dragonflies dangle in the air
Above shadows that fall into feeble forms
...

The fifth hour wind wakens
sienna leaves for a twilight chat.
The sky applies white dust in layers.
The moon gleams pebble pink.
...

In a cozy café in Suzhou
one can browse The New Yorker and Doris Day.
(Both old, incidentally)
Greece on the wall,
...

Trees walk the shore and shoo
the wind away. They shake off the noisy birds
and criss-cross the golden sun. They puncture
the clouds and dip their new fingers into ink
...

When you died
there was still a mass
production of filigree
in the sky
...

A gravedigger homeward plods,
Wearied from our riotous world,
To plow for what was once so dear,
“Far from the crowd’s ignoble strife.”*
...

A yuefu-themed poem

Sunrise in the south reaches the marble mansion in Cedar Grove. This house has a lovely girl, whose name, they say, is Brocade Grace. “She is skilled with the loom, and picks cotton clouds west of the wall.” Her basket is made of cinnamon shoots, its handle, an arch carved of Karnataka wood. When she walks, her raven black hair trails in a tress like curved hanging pods, and her silver bracelets jingle faintly like wind bells from India. Her ears hold twin moon pearls, to brighten her blouse of saffron damask, even her gauze skirt below. When passers-by see Brocade Grace, they drop their loads and stroke their beards. Young men with scrolls forget their scrolls. Young girls’ half-lidded eyes cast askance glances toward her. How many springs has this beauty seen, they ask?
...

“Why don’t you use your own language
to write? ” the poet asks over lunch.

A mother tongue
...

The hu
the man
the human
how to de-fetishize?
...

When the bell tolls twelve,
the scholar carefully ties
his Caponi leather shoes
and rises to return
...

The sky suddenly wreaks havoc upon us,
pours down clear from blackened clouds,
flooding the heart’s lingering drought.
...

You don’t want to be one
Who puts up fences.

“I believe, ” you say,
...