What Can Be Known?, and: Icons
Rent from DeepDyve- What Can Be Known?, and: Icons
What Can Be Known?
Only rain and ice and the branches' rattle.
And when I lean down in this warm roomand cup the white flesh of your cheekbarely, barelyyour eyes blink openwatchand close againsealing you in
A little whileand you will be filled with lightor go into the quietwhich never shall be broken [End Page 168]
Icons
Ten thousand rectangles of pale green jade.Frangible mail. A cool, dull shine. ArmorFor the dead. Celadon colored gemstones laidIn the form of a man asleep. Linked. A warrior.Skill of a swordsman harmless in reposeAnd tact of a craftsman. Names that no one knows,
Neither sculptor nor warrior. Immanent, each is a ghostWho cannot leave the icon of his life,His work, nor that of his companion, lost,But bound as one in jade. Their breath was briefAs flame, their gifts-artistry and war-Caught up together in death, still as they were.
Fragments of history. The image glows in my mind-A momentary beauty-when, going outside,I come upon hundreds of handmade kites in the wind,A children's tournament of sunlit silk, glideAnd loop and headlong dive, where children play,Young and immortal, near the close of day. [End Page 169]
Phyllis Hoge Thompson's two most recent books are Letters from Jian Hui and Other Poems, which emerged from a year of teaching in Beijing, and The Painted Clock, Memoirs for a New Mexico Ghost Town Bride. Both books are from Wildflower Press. She lives in and travels from Albuquerque.
