How little they cared the cost!
Fine food on dishes of green jade,
like Ming grave goods—

if I had died and gone to heaven,
heaven was a minor outpost,
far from the emperor’s favor.

It was the raisin capital of the world,
where I ate and drank and did not think once
of you back east. I must have died.

One of the women drove me east
to see the giant sequoias. I was so small,
just clay in the shape of a servant at their feet.

Far above me, boughs swished and sighed
like the silken sleeves of court,

the needles unthreading.
Sometimes we took boys with us
to carry the trappings of the office
and gave ourselves up to the moment,

forgetting a semester was an eternity.
We were stuck with them. Still, their faces
were never smoother than in the chilly mirror

of that lake. Even I grew younger.

Someone had brought a radio.
A thin wind blew cheap music into the dark

like cigarette smoke. O lost civilization!
Someone laughed at a splash,
or I heard a loon… . But I must call a boy

and make him kneel before me
to tie this up. Love, there’s a leaf

in the shape of a hand in this limbo

that I would send you, dark red,
and one like a waxy green heart.
There is much I haven’t told you.