I Love a Broad Margin to My Life Read online

  never learned the language. Couldn’t bear

  the music. Heard at evening, the music—mele

  and pila ho‘okani—would stay with me

  all the night and into the next day.

  It hurt my chest; my chest filled with tears.

  Words for the feeling are: Regret. Minamina.

  (Hun, said my mother. Hun, the sound of want.

  Hun.) Hun the nation, lost. Hun

  the land. Hun the beloved, loving people.

  They’re dancing, feasting, talking-story, singing,

  singing hello / goodbye. No sooner

  hello than goodbye. Trees, fronds wave;

  ocean waves. The time-blowing wind

  smells of flowers and volcano. My son has given

  me the reading that I never gave my father. Why

  aren’t writers read by their own children?

  The child doesn’t want to know that the parent

  suffers, the parent is far, far away.

  Joseph says, “Don’t write about me.”

  “Okay. I won’t do it anymore.”

  To read my father, I’d have to learn Chinese,

  the most difficult of languages, each word a study.

  A stroke off, a dot off, and you lose the word.

  You get sent down for re-education. You lose your life.

  My father wrote to me, poet to poet.

  He replied to me. I had goaded

  him: I’ll tell about you, you silent man.

  I’ll suppose you. You speak up if I’ve got

  you wrong. He answered me; he wrote

  in the flyleaves and wide margins of the Chinese

  editions of my books. I should’ve asked him to read

  his poetry to me, and to say them in common speech.

  I had had the time but not the nerve.

  (Oh, but the true poet crosses eternal

  distances. Perfect reader, come though 1,000

  years from now. Poem can also reach

  reader born 1,000 years before

  the poem, wish it into being. Li Bai

  and Du Fu, lucky sea turtles,

  found each other within their lifetimes.

  Oh, but these are hopeful superstitions

  of Chinese time and Chinese poets.

  I think non-poets live in the turning

  and returning cosmos this way: An act

  of love I do this morning saves a life

  on a far future battlefield. And the surprising

  love I feel that saves my life comes from

  a person whose soul somehow corresponding

  with my soul doing me a good deed 1,000

  years ago.) Cold, gray October

  day. I’ve built a fire, and sit by it.

  The last fire. Wood fires are being

  banned. Drinking the tea that cures everything.

  It’s raining, drizzly enough, I need

  not water the garden or go out to weed.

  Do nothing all the perfect day.

  A list of tasks for the rest of my working life:

  Translate Father’s writing into English.

  Publish fine press editions of the books

  with his calligraphy in the margins and

  my translations and my commentary

  on his commentary, like the I Ching. Father had

  a happy life; happy people are always

  making something. Learn how to grow

  old and leave life. How to leave

  you who love me? Do so in story.

  For the writer, doing something in fiction

  is the same as doing it in life.

  I can make the hero of my quondam novel,

  Monkey King, Wittman Ah Sing,

  observe Hindu tradition, and on his 5-times-12

  birthday unguiltily leave his wife. Parents

  dead, kids raised, the householder leaves

  spouse and home, and goes into the mountains,

  where his guru may be. In America, you can yourself

  be the guru, be the wandering starets.

  At his birthday picnic, Wittman Monkey wishes

  for that freedom as he and the wind blow out

  60-plus candles. Used to telling

  his perfectly good wife his every thought,

  he anti-proposes to her. “Taña, I love you. But.

  I made a wish that we didn’t have to be married

  anymore. I made a wish for China.

  That I go to China on my own.” Taña—

  beautiful and pretty as always, leaf shadows

  rubbing the wrinkles alongside her blue eyes

  and her smile, sun haloing her whitegold

  hair—Taña lets Wittman’s bare words

  hang in air. Go ahead, you Monkey.

  Wish away. Tell away. Tell it

  all away. Then she kicks ass—

  “Here’s your one to grow on!”—then

  gets quiet. She can be rid of him.

  But first, have it out. “So, we’re not

  going to be old lovers, and old artists

  together till we die. After all our years

  making up love, this thing, love,

  peculiar to you and me, you quit,

  incomplete. God damn it, Darling,

  if your wife—I—were Chinese,

  would she be your fit companion in China?”

  “Hell, Sweetheart, if you were Chinese,

  I wouldn’t’ve married you to begin with.

  I spurned the titas for you.” Forsaking the sisters.

  All my sisters-of-color. O, what

  a romance of youth was ours, mating, integrating,

  anti-anti-miscegenating. “Bad

  Monkey. You married me as a politcal act.”

  “No, Honey Lamb, uh uh.

  An act of artists—the creating of you-and-me.”

  Married so long, forgot how to declare I.

  I want Time. I want China.

  Married white because whites good at everything.

  Everything here. Go, live Chinese,

  gladly old. America, can’t get old,

  no place for the old. China, there be

  Immortalists. Time moves slower in China.

  They love the old in China. No verb

  tenses in Chinese, present tense

  grammar, always. Time doesn’t pass

  for speakers of such language. And the poets make

  time go backward, write stroke by stroke,

  erase one month of age with every poem.

  Tuesday, I cried—in public,

  a Chinese woman wailing to the streets—

  over the headline: LIBBY FINGERS CHENEY.

  I gloated, but suddenly stopped moving, and wept.

  The stupid, the greedy, the cruel, the unfair have taken

  over the world. How embarrassing, people asking,

  “What’s wrong?” and having to answer, “Cheney.

  Rumsfeld. Rove. Halliburton. Bush.” The liars.

  The killers. Taking over the world. Aging,

  I don’t cry for the personal anymore,

  only for the political. Today’s news photo:

  A 10-year-old boy—his name is

  Ali Nasir Jabur—covers his eyes

  with his hands. He hunkers in the truck bed

  next to the long blanket-wrapped bodies of

  his sister, 2 brothers, mother, and father.

  A man’s bare feet stick out from a blanket

  that has been taped around the ankles.

  I see this picture, I don’t want to live.

  I’ve seen the faces of beaten, cloaked women.

  Their black wounds infected, their eyes

  swollen shut. Their bodies beaten too,

  but can’t be seen. I want to die.

  Just last week, 12 sets of bones

  from Viet Nam were buried in 12 ceremonies.

  At sunset, I join the neighbors—with sangha,

  life is
worth living—standing at the BART

  station, holding lit candles, reminding

  one and all that the 2,000th American

  soldier has died in Iraq. Not counting

  mercenaries, contract workers, Iraqis, Afghanis.

  The children are quiet. How do their parents

  explain war to them? “War.” A growl sound.

  And the good—capitalistic?—of standing in

  the street doing nothing? “People are fighting …”

  But a “fight” connotes fairness, even-sidedness,

  equal powers. “… And we’re being quiet, thinking

  of them, and holding them in our hearts, safe.

  We’re setting an example of not-fighting.

  The honking cars are making good noise;

  they’re honking Peace, Peace.”

  Wednesday,

  birthday eve, I tried re-reading

  Don Quixote. (My writings are being translated

  into Castellano and Catalan. La Dona Guerrera.)

  The mad and sorry knight is only 50.

  Delusions gone, illusions gone, he dies.

  Books killed him. Cervantes worked on

  Don Quijote de la Mancha while in jail.

  For 5 years, he was given solitude,

  and paper, ink, and pens, and time. In Chinese

  jails, each prisoner is given the 4

  valuable things, writes his or her life,

  and is rehabilitated. I’ve been in jail too, but

  so much going on, so many

  people to socialize with, not a jot

  of writing done. The charge against me:

  DEMO IN A RESTRICTED ZONE—

  WHITE HOUSE SIDEWALK. The U.S.

  is turning Chinese, barricading

  the White House, Forbidden City, Great Wall

  along borders.

  Now, it’s my birthday.

  October 27. And Sylvia Plath’s.

  And Dylan Thomas’s. Once on this date,

  I was in Swansea, inside the poet’s

  writing shed, a staged mess, bottles

  and cups on table and floor. A postcard

  of Einstein sticking out his tongue.

  I like Thoreau’s house better, neat and tidy.

  I walked out on Three Cliffs Bay.

  Whole shells—cockles, mussels, clams,

  golden clams, and snails, and oysters, jewels—

  bestrew the endless wet land.

  I cannot see to the last of it, not a lip of sea.

  No surf. “We be surfers in Swansea.”

  I’ve never seen tide go out so far.

  “The furthest tide in the world.” I followed the gleam

  of jewels—I was walking on sea bottom—

  and walked out and out and out, like the tide

  to the Celtic Sea. Until I remembered: the tide

  will come back in, in a rush,

  and run me down, and drown me. By the time

  I see and hear incoming surf,

  it will be too late. I ran

  back for the seawall, so far away,

  and made it, and did not die on that birthday.

  Not ready to give myself up.

  I have fears on my birthdays. Scared.

  I am afraid, and need to write.

  Keep this day. Save this moment.

  Save each scrap of moment; write it down.

  Save this moment. And this one. And this.

  But I can’t go on noting every drip and drop.

  I want poetry as it came to my young self

  humming and rushing, no patience for

  the chapter book.

  I’m standing on top of a hill;

  I can see everywhichway—

  the long way that I came, and the few

  places I have yet to go. Treat

  my whole life as formally a day.

  I used to be able, in hours, to relive,

  to refeel my life from its baby beginnings

  all the way to the present. 3 times

  I slipped into lives before this one.

  I have been a man in China, and a woman

  in China, and a woman in the Wild West.

  (My college roommate called; she’d met

  Earll and me in Atlantis, but I don’t

  remember that.) I’ve been married

  to Earll for 3 lifetimes, counting

  this one. From time to time, we lose each other,

  but can’t divorce until we get it right.

  Love, that is. Get love right. Get

  marriage right. Earll won’t believe

  in reincarnation, and makes fun of it.

  The Dalai Lama in How to Expand Love

  says to try “the possibility that past

  and future rebirth over a continuum

  of lives may take place.” We have forever.

  Find me, love me, again.

  I find you, I love you, again.

  I’ve tried but could not see

  my next life. All was immense black

  space, no stars. After a while,

  no more trying to progress, I returned—

  was returned—to an ordinary scene that happened

  yesterday, and every sunny day: Earll and I

  are having a glass of wine with supper—bruschetta

  from our own tomatoes and basil—under the trellis

  of bougainvillea, periwinkly clematis,

  and roses. Shadows and sunlight are moving at Indian

  summer’s pace. The Big Fire burned

  the grove of Monterey pines. We planted

  purple rain birches, Australian tea

  trees, dogwood, the elm, locust, catalpa,

  3 redwoods from seed, 4 pepper

  willows, and 7 kinds of fruit trees.

  The katsura and the yucca are volunteers.

  That Texas privet and the bamboo, survivors. Here,

  I feel as I felt in Hawai‘i, as I felt in Eden.

  A joy in place. Adam and Eve were never

  thrown out; they grew old in the garden.

  They returned after travels. So, I,

  like the 14th Dalai Lama, have arrived

  at my last incarnation? I don’t feel a good

  enough person to be allowed off the wheel.

  I am guilty for leaving my mother. For leaving

  many mothers—nations, my race, the ghetto.

  For enjoying unconsciousness and dreams, wanting

  sleep like thirst for water. I left MaMa

  for Berkeley, then 17 years in Hawai‘i.

  Couldn’t come home winter and spring breaks,

  nor summers. She asked, “How can I bear

  your leaving?” No, I’m not translating right.

  “Can I seh doc your leaving?” Seh doc

  tells the pain of losing something valuable.

  How can she afford my leaving?

  Seh doc sounds like can write.

  Sounds almost like my father’s name.

  Father who left her behind in China for 15

  years. I too left her.

  “Lucky,” she bade and blessed, in English. “Lucky.”

  She and Father stood at the gate, looking

  after me. Looking after each child as

  we left for college, left for Viet Nam.

  Her eyes were large and all-holding.

  No tears. She only cried when laughing.

  Me too. I’m in tears laughing.

  From the demimonde, Colette wrote, lying

  to her mother, All’s well, I’m happy.

  Our only son did not leave us;

  we left him in Hawai‘i.

  Generations. Karma. Ah Goong

  walked my mother to the end of Tail End

  Village. Whenever she looked back, he was still

  standing there weeping and looking after her.

  LEAVING HOME

  I’ll watch over Wittman Ah Sing

  go through the leaving of
his wife. A practicing artist

  herself, Taña understands the wanter

  of freedom. Let him go. If they stay put,

  husband and wife lose each other anyway,

  artist and artist dreaming up separate

  existences. Go on roads through country you define

  as you go. Wend through taboo mazes.

  “But, Wittman,” says Taña, “ ’til death us do part.”

  (Say those words, and you vow once again.)

  “No, Taña, not death, only away awhile.”

  Married so long, every word and moment is

  thick with strata and fathoms and echoes.

  35 years ago, they climbed

  the Filbert Steps, walked in and out

  of garden gates, pretended this house

  and that house were home. They’d wed atop

  Coit Tower. Look! Where it comes again.

  Our wedding tower lifts out of the fog

  and the forest edge of the City. “I need

  to get to China, and I have to go

  without helpmeet. I’ve been married to you

  so long, my world is you. You

  see a thing, I see it. The friends you

  like, I like. The friends you can’t

  stand, I can’t stand. My

  perception is wedded to your perception.

  You have artist’s eyes. I’d wind up

  seeing the China you see. I want

  to see for myself my own true China.”

  Taña says, “So, you don’t want to be

  with me, and we become old, old

  lovers and old artists together. You,

  my old lover. I love you, old lover.”

  Wittman feels a rush that is Taña’s benevolence

  for him suffuse him. He has to try harder

  to leave her. “I love you, Taña. Thank you,

  my wife, for our lifetime,

  and our past lifetimes. We don’t

  have to get divorce papers. We quit

  being householders is all. The chi

  connecting us will stretch infinitely.”

  On such agreement, the long-married can part.

  His birthday morning continues fair. The Bay

  is busy with sailboats, and the ocean outside

  the Golden Gate calmly opens forever.

  All seems well, as though Water Margin

  protected us. I have a soul, and it expands large

  as I look out at the Pacific; I do

  remember to look every single day.

  Suddenly, I get scared. Some

  fanatic is delivering by freighter or yacht or barge

  or cruiser a nuke. BANG! The end.

  The separating couple drive to Reno—not

  for divorce but to give their son, Mario, a chance

  to say Happy Birthday, Dad, and Goodbye.

  Spelling each other at the wheel, they cross