The Great Wall Of China:

Norman Dubie 29 THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA: / Norman Dubie Below my turret the spotted cows plough through the circuit Of their day, a passage from meadow to brook To willows to the recognition of a distant, Brilliantly lit parlor with straw in its high lofts . . . Cows come at us like sour, ponderous kittens, With empty attention, not yet weaned From the lacunae of a milk-pitcher that's beaded With sweat. The blue wheel of cheese Has short white hairs growing on it. I was fifty-three years of age, yesterday! I'm one of four palace sentries transfered to the Wall Near the Black Desert but East of it beside the mariposa-tiers of the green Husi Gorge. It was said that I had knowledge of three of the Dowager's virgins. A masked white-and-black kitten is asleep in my lap, I would not disturb her falling through dreams, not even If barbarians came rattling and huffing over the horizon: They too would be dreaming, but of the obese Dowager's Body-net of sapphires and rubies! There have been years of fasting without a carnival! My great cloak shields my eyes like a wing, rain suddenly Traversing the countryside. By the brook, nevertheless, Two lovers embrace, you can not Draw a geometer's straight line between them For they have eclipsed One another with just such an axiom! Pine needles stick to their glistening skin. She holds him back: Saying: It's your root husband we center on, but my root is strong also A vine on which are strung the sleeping pods of our unborn, all of them! The children stretch from me to that sagging ridgepole .... And there is a shadow like a weight In our unmade bed! An aspect 30 THE MISSOURI REVIEW Of the mother must be concealed from us; that aspect Emerges, after much thought, in the lovers she selects for us. I have listened Innocently from my battlement to a young couple speaking, In repose, as the rain slowed, having messed the impression Of a large basket, left by the lovers in the soft rusty needles . . . Happiness is the frantic description Of what can not last . . . the cows in their circle are weighted against us. The ultimate physical harmony Of lovers is pain softened into the oblivion of music . . . My three kittens dance foolishly to my whittled pipe of mahogany. Often, with a delicate pin, I take a seed from an apple. But only With the greed Of a newborn feeding at a breast Can we pluck from a seed the buffed Red apple that's cross-stitched with gold and sweeter than any life to come . . . ...