SAND-CASTLE
i.m. Liu Xiaobo
The workmen are building a great new wall
beside my octagonal turtle-
hermitage – where Sophie’s little
ruddy chair sits patiently, for one & all.
Another chair remained in Stockholm,
waiting for a noble prince
to win his prize of Peace.
His prize is won. He’s going home.
He held his vigil by Heavenly Gate.
Hatred can rot a person’s
wisdom & conscience,
enemy mentality poison the spirit
of a nation, inflict brutal life & death
struggles, destroy a country’s
tolerance, humanity...
They want to bury him deep in the earth
yet verily I say to you, unless
a grain of wheat falls
into earth & dies,
it remains alone – but if it dies
it bears much fruit. I remember
the orange Chinese lantern
peeking its bright octagon
out of green shade. Welcome glimmer
with hidden crimson berry – lamp
of mountain sheepherder
marked by the torture
cell like turtleshell (or scarab stamp)
*
only to grope toward pine-green Liberty.
My beetle’s modest haruspex,
the ideogram for pontifex,
key row-your-boat for Vera City –
check the N-trail labyrinth.
This liver between Earth
& Sky was micro-moth
or Maximus (locked up til 44th
of July, by Bureau of Injustice).
His wounded knee, his tender
foot, his gentle mind were
furrowed brow, for cultivating scholars...
Thrones are made for serial tumblers.
You can demote King Tubby Lou,
kill Voodoo Queen Marie – so
what? Arrestocrats come back in numbers
juggling for electric chairs. Polly
Pound says so, the mystical
Apologist of Tyranny; she’ll
sow you Uncle Ez’s grapes – see
how they make great yappy whine!
(& his chinoise Confusion
still bakes a mean Rune
Cake.) He not the Way, sez Hen.
The blot thickens. Blue Emperor Mon-Ki,
with his twin princelings, Rude May-Hem
& Gilt Moon-Eye... descended from
Lord Me-Man, Minotaur of Die-Nasty...
*
[sludge on the honey-scroll, I guess]
We circulate by arrow-
glance, the human sorrow
of disharmony (each creepy-eepy instance);
only the gentleness of Manitou
the windy sheep-liver
& fleet lamb-giver
who stands magnanimous & true
blue cedar (melodious rainbow
of royal Reality)
is King. So let her be.
Your soul, sealed so, dear Liu Xiaobo –
your spouse, waiting by prison-house,
will flex her wings, & spread
your word – rise from the dead;
her torch (inalienable human justice)
shines from copper harbors & green hills;
over harm & over hate,
ever-flowing light on light
descends like turtledove on twisted wills
to straighten ways streams merging
into concord toward the sea
Ocean of Charter 8 mercy
& fellowship in gratitude Thanksgiving
Day after the battlefields are still
& Liberty beams far & wide
her smile across the tide
& turmoil of the mind’s sand-castle jail
7.14.17
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