READING THE CITY
The city does not tell its past, but
contains it like the lines of a hand.
Italo Calvino
Previous section: The Garden
Behind the Lines
Another day of business suits, investment talk,
and tonight the
dictionary spits hard grey words -
indifferent rich
hungry poor
But Thuy brings gifts blessed at her local temple
where she prays for us all, the lucky and the rest,
where stone gods
promote acceptance of what is.
Weary of debate, our speech limps toward
hiatus,
the dictionary deadlocks in wooden silence.
No way forward,
but friendship must take us there
with steady eyes and a few household
phrases.
Thuy takes my hand - dear sister let us eat. Books
abandoned, we hit the streets in search of rice soup.
Around Hoan
Kiem lake, families buy lottery tickets,
eat sugar dough; boys fly kites;
cool dudes parade;
and above the push of sellers, touts and beggars -
a
luxury hotel window frames a scene stage-lit ...
business men, hard at
work with dumb bells,
exercising the narrowed arteries of the
heart.
I do the same, mimes Thuy, at market with my baskets;
those men
can help me, then they won't get fatter.
We swerve our giggling motorbike to
join the pack,
burn through night air with helpless laughter -
two slight
women who know we are scarcely visible,
circling the dark lake with our
ribbons of thought.
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