Chord Box: Poems

鼓浪屿 (gŭ làng yŭ)

鼓浪屿 (gŭ làng yŭ) IN FUJIAN PROVINCE,ALSO KNOWN AS “THE ISLAND OF PIANOS” To learn the God of an island, I listen first for his hammers: here, the thimble-drop of bougainvillea, and mollusks clicking in silver bowls. Boats, a row of Dutch shoes, clap, hull against hull—along the reef, what is heard as timpani: 鼓浪屿, gŭ làng yŭ— 鼓 drum, 浪 wave, 屿 islet. Once, eyelet: Sunday’s lace and swish when white ladies landed, arms buried under hymnbooks. They came with pianos 87 to dolly-up the island hills, and to form chorales from orphans, mining belief like ore. Faith, quick to cull in a sturdy room of sound—everyone can love 4/4, the easy symmetry in hymns. My shadow grows a train as I wander, wrap around porches—and snake through alleys, whereTuscan villas mold and yellow. Moon-shaped gates are the old rings to someone’s garden—and over trees Koxinga stands on a peak in granite armor. 喵喵: miao miao a peacock shrieks, splays 88 his tutu of evil eyes. Is this some sign for death? Foreigner, I can’t read his note in full. Does he know about the first boy trained with mutes and levers, then sent by foot to tune against the island’s brackish air? Once, some learned arpeggios; others, fog and opium.A few climbed cliffs and leapt, gave up their bodies for water. If there is a key for this blue island, it might be B major—both gilt and dark somehow, what drifts now from the open window: someone loves Chopin’s 89 third nocturne, even in the height of day. As I leave, I pass a school where children clink the first of their scales. Zhŭ! From their teacher, the only syllable I can register. I think it is the zhŭ that means concentrate;join together. Or was it the other one: god;master? Nuance: all but the ferry’s siren dampens, meets the deaf in my ear. 90 ...