A Matter of Time
Rent from DeepDyve- A Matter of Time
to C. K. S. (192?–2013)
The last time I saw this body, this bodychose me. “Fiona,” it called outloud at sundown, and I remembernothing of what I did. Sometimes I bend closeto check if it breathes. Curiousbut discerning. In-between scenes a thousandmiles from this ward, crowded yet receding,days when air was still clear, perhaps a little raw,a village, primary colors, the kitchenwhere I memorized idioms and T’ao Ch’ienand love poems, sesame cakes, Shanghainesedumplings to steam with napa cabbage, a stonehouse gone in flames on your sixtieth birthday.What’s left behind of the fieldreminds me of this body. A wounded horsewhich must suffer in order to live.Rubble fresh and set apart from the disaster.The body is fighting with the spirit inside it.What would the flesh say? Nothing,it says. It says nothing.Now I touch its skin, the creamof being alive, in decorum, after threelives four countries in ninedecades. The past and the presentagainst what comes next. Sweetly orbriefly, the impressive cruelty. [End Page 21] If soul can’t talk to body, each organto vie for many gods before victory,is there, is there—I can’t inventthis story. Help me with the title, notin words or grief or all of it opening to seekrelief. In the endthe beginning unnecessary, to avoidanguish. Grandmother.Two women.Facing exhaustion without permission to leave. [End Page 22]
Fiona Sze-Lorrain writes and translates in English, French, and Chinese. The author of two books of poetry, My Funeral Gondola and Water the Moon, and translations of contemporary Chinese poets from Zephyr Press, she is longlisted for the 2014 pen Award for Poetry in Translation. She works as a zheng harpist and editor in France. Her translation of Yi Lu’s Sea Summit is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions.
