Tormented, the mind has no charity
for complexity or excess.
Art must reveal its purpose
it demands, swiftly and with clarity.

A poem wants you to be whole
and willing to enter its small,
lavish palace. These are my silk curtains,
it wants to tell you, this scroll

belonged to a twelfth century king.
In black ink, a figure
in a rice field, a river
twisting south toward Beijing.

As you explore the scroll’s detail,
the poem will end abruptly, having been
depended on by no one, and proving only
what a cloud proves when it veils

the midday sun. And the olive trees
lose their shadows, and the words
slip through your mind like wind
through silver leaves.