I Love a Broad Margin to My Life - Maxine Hong Kingston [3]
This corridor is an oasis on the Silk Road,
as if that thoroughfare continues through Africa,
and across oceans. An Egyptian-looking woman
held up to me, then to Earll,
a tray of fruits and vegetables. “Eid,”
she said. “Celebrate the Eid.”
I chose a cherry tomato and a medjool date.
I willed my Thank you to embrace her, go through
and around her, and enfold the other Muslims, the ones
here, and the many far away. Thank you,
Muslims, for giving food to whoever happens
among you. I’m lucky, my timing in sync with their time,
the sun setting, and a new moon coming up.
Last day of Ramadan, women ending their fast.
If not for years of practicing Buddhist silence
and Quaker silence, I would’ve chattered away,
and missed the quiet, the peace, the lovingkindness.
Happy birthday to me.
Sunday, my friend Claude
brought a tea grown by old Greek ladies.
“It cures everything.” I drink, though nothing
needs curing. “Cured!” we said in unison.
Monday ere birthday, I resolve, I shall rest
from worry and pursuit. (In childhood chasedreams,
monsters chased me. Now, I do the chasing.)
Joseph, our son, calls. In a marathon read,
he’s finished all the books I’ve ever published.
I’m the only writer I know whose offspring
reads her. “How was it?” “Good.” (“Accurate,”
said my mother.) Joseph cares for accuracy too.
He’s mailing me pages of errata: I got
the Hawaiian wrong; I got the pidgin
wrong. He’s a musician; he has the ear. I love
hearing his voice wishing me happy birthday.
“I must be getting old too; I
really like my power tools.” He’d
read again and again the instructions on how
to use a chainsaw, then cut up the pine
trees without mishap. Borders in Honolulu
sold all his CDs, and wants more.
My time in Hawai‘i, I never learned the hula,
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