Autumn Listening: on a performance by the late cellist Jacqueline du Pré

a troubling old dream, turning to face the dead, here
and now. not that you heard the intense impression of the wild wind
weakening in the light, ending in a sigh before the distance of the
   disappearing string vibrato and the
darkness of the tight-shut lips burst open.

heard was: flowing water forming in the vault above.
water obeying deadwood, chiseling a deep notch.
counterpoised shadows, plus counterpoised,
   shaded eyes glancing back,
I see the fading of the æsthetes vast only in their backward glance.

one insomniac night the dim torch in transit to naming
will be snatched from your ear. with a heartbroken old dream
rolled up and reconstructed according to fashion. if late at night
   or early in the morning old age
disappeared, no one would seem lonesome to forgetting.

oh æsthetes of romanticism! in tragic human nature’s
good deeds will your flesh be expended,
tears pooling, nothing to depend on.
   only flesh
will be gentle, however brief said gentleness.

August 14, 1992, Chengdu