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Body Shadows

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Once upon a time the Chairman
ordered the complete destruction
of the “Four Pests” plaguing China:
bedbugs, roaches, rats, and sparrows.
Bourgeois birds, he called the sparrows.
Sparrows stole the seed the farmers
sowed and compromised the harvests.
So, throughout the country, loyal
citizens would gather under
trees and eaves where sparrows nested
and make such an awful racket”
banging pots and pans together,
lighting reels of firecrackers,
singing patriotic ditties”
that the sparrows fled in terror.
When the frightened birds alighted
on a nearby branch the loyal
citizens went chasing after,
banging pots and pans together,
lighting reels of firecrackers,
singing patriotic ditties
till at last the bourgeois sparrows
who had ruined recent harvests
dropped from sheer exhaustion, many
dead before they even landed.
The adults being dead or banished,
citizens then pulled the nests down,
stole the eggs, and killed the hatchlings.
Fried, the birds provided protein
and a welcome change of diet.
In the first two years that followed
there in fact were record harvests,
(though by then the Chairman, having
learned the birds ate mostly insects,
called off the extermination),
but the third year, swarms of locusts
landed and, without the sparrows
to eat them , devoured the harvest.
When at length the crops recovered,
they grew thickest in those places
where a worker, starved, exhausted,
had expired and lay buried.
Seen from overhead, these fertile
patches looked like human bodies.
Body shadows, people called them.

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Friend, in the Desolate Time

Thu, 01 May 2003 00:00:00 -0400

Friend, in the desolate time, when your soul

is enshrouded in darkness

When, in a deep abyss, memory and feeling

die out,

Intellect timidly gropes among shadowy forms

and illusions

Heart can no longer sigh, eye is unable

to weep;

When, from your night-clouded soul the wings

of fire have fallen

And you, to nothing, afraid, feel

yourself sinking once more,

Say, who rescues you then?”Who is the

comforting angel

Brings to your innermost soul order and

beauty again,

Building once more your fragmented world,

restoring the fallen

Altar, and when it is raised, lighting

the sacred flame?”

None but the powerful being who first from

the limitless darkness

Kissed to life seraphs and woke

numberless suns to their dance.

None but the holy Word who called the worlds

into existence

And in whose power the worlds move on

their paths to this day.

Therefore, rejoice, oh friend, and sing in

the darkness of sorrow:

Night is the mother of day, Chaos the

neighbor of God.

Erik Johan Stagnelius

Translated from the Swedish by Bill Coyle

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Conversing with an Absent God

Mon, 01 Jun 1998 00:00:00 -0400

Questions for Ecclesiastes
By Mark Jarman
Story Line Press 100 pp. $10 paper

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