Festival of the Weaving Maiden

FESTIVAL OF THE WEAVING MAIDEN / Brenda Hillman The servants speak to the void in their diaries, writing pages of tanka to the ordinary star or go outside and write their names on mulberry leaves, tie them to bamboo stakes and watch the sky in a pool while holding their sleeves. Some say the Maiden rows across the sky; some say she walks a bridge of magpie wings to sleep with the banished boy, making a bed in the ragged atmosphere, dusting the pillow and screens, laying down the borrowed robes for the festival's routines. The servants love the legend, and embellish it, yearly adding details. They have the star relearn her weaving: shuttle and loom, hard work and no sex, looking across the night sky for the other until she weaves a dream from her mistakes. They stay all night on their knees, watching heaven, offering clothes to the Maiden, keeping records. They admire the Herd Boy, tending his absent sheep, and love the girl who is punished with art, because the servants think eternity is a reward. Though they spend their own lives mourning dead warriors, embroidering poems on the backs of coats, meeting spirits on the Great Road or no one in the Wisteria Hall, they worship the artist, the white spider, then write that the dew falls equally on everyone. 64 · The Missouri Review ...