I Love a Broad Margin to My Life

by Maxine Hong Kingston

  to the right gate. She thanked me. She said

  goodbye, see you again. “Joy kin.”

  She did not look back. Good.

  Gotta go, things to do, people

  to meet, places to be.

  CITY

  I betook

  myself to Xi’an. Like everyone,

  I’m leaving village for city. But a city

  so old and deep in-country, it has a chance

  not to be the same global city

  as every city. Xi’an means West Peace,

  and was the capital during 4 eras, not Sung.

  I stood at the bottom of the gray rock wall

  of the walled city, looked up its slope,

  looked to the curved sides, could not get

  a sense of the whole layout. More solid

  than Long Wall. A granite bowl banks

  the earth around (parts of?) the city. I stood

  on top of the wall, walked the boulevard

  paved with bricks. I enjoyed spaciousness,

  few walkers that day, few bicyclists.

  At the ramparts on one side, I looked down

  at ponds and moats. On the other side, sky-

  scrapers, like a mirage city, much higher

  than the walls. Relics of military defense,

  walls are no barrier to attack, no

  barrier to in-migration, never have been.

  Xi’an, like the dusty villages, pushes out of

  earth, and earth pulls it down into earth.

  Build upward, towers, skyscrapers,

  pagodas. Dig out of engulfing earth.

  The air is dark. Everyone coughs.

  Cover the kids’ faces with gauzy scarves.

  It’s not just the cars. It’s the wind

  blowing sand into this city at the south-

  easternmost edge of the Gobi desert.

  The body of sand is shifting over eastward,

  and uncovering rock ground. Down in the street,

  though dirt gray (this day won’t count

  as blue-sky day either), glass

  and steel shine through. Cities are full

  of mirrors. My whole time in the villages, I

  did not see a mirror. I had not looked

  at my image. Village people live so close

  together—everyone sees everyone every

  day—they know how attractive or unattractive

  they are. Now the way I look

  appears to me, here, there, in windows, on chrome,

  in mirrors in markets and bathrooms. I have changed.

  I am a dandelion puffball blur. My hair,

  scribbles of white lines. My face. Lines

  crisscross and zigzag my face.

  My eyes. I am looking into eyes

  whose color has turned lighter, hazy brown.

  Wind and time are blowing me out.

  The old women around me are vivid and loud.

  Their hair is black. They’re beggars, soliciting

  in a group outside the temple, selling

  incense and matches, but don’t care whether

  you buy or not. They’re out of the house enjoying

  ladies’ company. A lone gray woman is

  sitting on the curb by the crosswalk.

  She’s begging, not selling anything;

  begging is against the law. A policeman

  and a cadre woman in charge of the street talk

  to her for a long time. The cop kneels

  to talk to her. She does not reply. I think

  he’s trying to convince her to cease begging,

  to get up and move on. The cadre

  woman, an old woman too, is not

  giving her a scolding. They’re treating her nicely,

  speaking softly, secretively. They don’t want

  to make a scene on the street, don’t want

  this conturbation to be happening. Homeless old

  beggar women? None such. I

  keep watching. They won’t hurt her as long

  as the American tourist watches. After quite

  a while, I have more interesting sights

  to see, and leave. When I come back

  to that street corner, she’s gone. Why

  is it that old women are China’s refuse,

  and men, war veterans, America’s? When the society

  is supposed to be honoring grandmothers, and admiring

  macho men? “Do not let mother and father go

  hungry; feed them meat from the flesh of your arm.”

  Walking past the incense ladies, all

  acting important, I go inside the temple.

  Up on platforms, the fortune-tellers,

  all men, perform their specialties—

  coins, yarrow, the I Ching, magic

  birds, turtle shells. They read palms,

  read the loops and whorls and arches on

  fingerprints, read words on sticks of

  bamboo, read faces and freckles

  and bumps on heads. I buy a fortune.

  I point to a little cage in a row

  of little cages. The magic man slides

  open the door. Out hops a java

  finch. It picks up a card in its diamond

  beak: the Woman Warrior, charging forth

  on her white horse, wielding her double broadswords.

  “You are brave, you will live a long life.”

  But he must tell everyone: You’ll live long.

  Never death. Never suicide. The java finch

  eats a reward of seeds, and hops back

  into its cage. In Xi’an, there are drum

  towers and bell towers, and wild goose

  towers. Chinese contrary, the Small

  Wild Goose is 13 stories

  high; the Big Wild Goose, 7.

  A poet was once seen riding a wild goose,

  flying over the city, and away. All

  had been golden, the goose, the poet, his robes,

  the towers. The eyewitnesses watched until

  they saw what seemed to be a golden insect

  vanish into the sky. I give incense

  and make slow bows at Big Wild Goose,

  that I should write well, like Du Fu

  and Li Bai, who had both come here,

  and written well. That my writing give life,

  to whomever I write about, as Shakespeare

  promised. Chinese are mad for long life.

  Quest and wish for time, more time,

  more, yet more. Carve poems and decrees

  on rocks. Erect forests of steles. 500

  pyramids to safeguard the emperors

  inside them, and their armies, and horses,

  acrobats, and musicians, always. I myself

  have tasted longlife medicine—bitter.

  My mother gave it to us. Rabbit-in-the-Moon—

  my father—mixes the elixir for immortality.

  But I have seen poets training in impermanence.

  Early in the paved city, when dew beads

  the marble and concrete, the poets write with water.

  He or she stands quietly holding

  the tall brush, like a lance, like a shuffleboard

  paddle, like a pole vault pole. Then touches

  the writing end—a cloth-wrapped mallet, not a mop—

  down upon the hard ground, the page.

  Legs spread, the poet, straddling the coming words,

  sweeps downward stroke to the left, upward

  stroke to the right, dabs quick dots,

  pulls horizontal lines, pulls vertical

  lines, flips a sharp-curve tail.

  Gets to the end before the beginning dries.

  Onlookers, readers, and fellow poets

  leaning on their own writing poles, read

  aloud the transpiring words, one

  word, next word, then the whole

  fleeting poem, exclaim over it, criticize it,

  memorize i
t, sing it once more as the sun

  dries it up. They stand around the spot

  where the poem had been, don’t step on it,

  and discuss the writing of it, the idea of it,

  the prosody of it with its creator. The sun rises,

  time to wet the brushes in the water bucket.

  Dip again and again, and write long

  long lines. No corrections! No

  reworking! One poet writes,

  another poet writes—in answer!

  I should’ve asked to borrow a writing pole,

  and drawn an enso as big a circle as I

  could make in one wet swoop all

  the way around myself, me the center.

  In Japanese Zen, on your 60th birthday,

  you can draw a perfect circle. However

  it arcs or squiggles, however black or faint,

  large or small, one swoop or 2

  discontinuous strokes—perfect.

  You’ve brought to the making of it your lifetime

  of ability. My perfect reader would know to read

  my enso’s journey from Asia to America back

  to Asia, from classical times to modern, to New Age.

  In the park of formal gardens, the martial artists—

  practitioners of the many ways of kung fu,

  and disco, women with fans, women with the long

  ribbon, swordswomen, swordsmen—are moving

  and dancing to the rhythms of his own discipline,

  her own discipline. Solitaries, too, claim

  their places—the top of the round bridge,

  the island of grass, the room behind a curtain

  of weeping willow. Free to make whatever

  expressions you like. Dance like nobody else.

  I join this group and that one, get easily

  into step, not worried, in sync,

  out of sync, nobody’s looking at me.

  I’m part of the Chinese crowd. I stand

  in first-position chi kung, and watch

  the teacher direct her advanced students, who

  have their backs to her. She waves her hands,

  and they in unison leap into the air.

  Waw! Wei! She’s lifting, orchestrating

  their jumps with chi. Her chi is mighty;

  she is 90 years old. Teacher

  walks up to me; she studies me.

  I feel warmth from her eyes on my skin.

  She adjusts my hands to make paws like

  an upright-standing squirrel or bear.

  She runs her hand straight down the center

  of my chest. I feel power shoot

  into me, heating my core, glowing. She’d

  given me some of her chi, charged me with chi.

  Chi is real; I am strengthened to this day.

  “You stand for one hour,” she says.

  I stand for one hour. Marveling, there is such

  a thing as chi. Yin wind, yang

  wind, real. Life, love, soul,

  good. And there are people who can

  control it and transmit it, and teach you how

  to acquire chi, and how to use it. At the end

  of my hour, Teacher comes to check on me.

  Her eyes scan me, land on my hair.

  “Keep working on your chi kung;

  your hair will turn black.” Her hair

  is jet-black. She doesn’t like

  white hair. I won’t work chi kung

  to change my hair; I want to change the world.

  My body and mind taking on forms that

  Chinese have been configuring for 4,000

  years, my 12 meridians linking up

  with the globe’s 360, energy will round

  the globe, and heal the bombed-up world.

  I’m not alone; people here and people who’ve

  migrated everywhere are doing this work of

  influencing wind and water (feng shui).

  We continue the life of the world. Live,

  live, live, live.

  In Xi’an,

  there’s a museum like the museum I made

  as a kid for my collections, strange things

  I picked up along the railroad tracks,

  and in the slough, and in the cash register.

  Deer hoof, a baby bat, counterfeit

  money, fool’s gold. Behind dusty

  glass, there lay the arrow with nock-whistle

  that I’d invented for the barbarians who

  played the reed pipe. The poet’s imagination

  flies true. It works, it hit on the actual.

  It can make up a thing that will

  materialize, in China, in Time, the past, the future.

  So, at the walled city of West Peace,

  I come to the start of the Silk Road, which forks.

  Southwest, the way Tripitaka Tang

  and Monkey Sun Wu Kong went questing,

  betakes you to India. Northwest, you’d end

  up in Afghanistan, then Iran, then Uruk,

  home of Gilgamesh—Iraq. Peace groups

  invite me to these places, but I turn them down.

  I don’t want my heart to break.

  Fa Mook Lan would go. She’d join

  the army of whichever side held her family

  hostage. She’d win battles, and receive

  honorable discharge home, though the 1,000

  years war is not done. Now

  I know: She killed herself.

  She had P.T.S.D.; her soldier’s heart broke,

  and she fell upon her sword. This month,

  May 2009, more American soldiers died by

  their own hand than killed by Iraqis and Al Qaeda.

  So far this year, 62 suicides,

  more than half of them National Guard;

  138 in 2008. I have no words of consolation.

  Wittman, son, brother, imaginary friend,

  I need you. Help me again. Go

  up Sky Mountain. Here, I’ll

  unwind for you a ribbon of rainbow silk

  scrolling into golden desert. Walk

  upon it with men in burnooses and women in burkas,

  colors blowing and flapping, and camels swaying

  and swinging bells, heading toward cities

  and mirages of cities. The oasis that gives you

  haven is Basra, the air station and naval

  base. Basra, home of Sinbad the Sailor,

  and before that, the Garden of Eden.

  Please stand on a roadside, and hold

  the Bell of Peace, a golden bowl, on

  your proffering hand, and think this thought:

  “Body, speech, and mind in perfect oneness,

  I send my heart along with the sound of this bell.

  May all the hearers awaken from forgetfulness,

  and transcend the path of anxiety and sorrow.”

  Touch bell stick to bell, warming it,

  breathe in, breathe out, then make one

  sure stroke. The ring changes the air.

  The ring rings through din. The din

  stills. The ring makes silence all

  around, all around. Explosions cease.

  Bombardment ends. Combatants

  stop to enjoy the sound of Buddha’s voice.

  The ring gathers time into one moment

  of peace. Which is torn by engine noise

  from a light, white aircraft, like an insect,

  a whitefly. A drone. A hunter-killer drone.

  Yell at it, “Coward! Coward!” We are cowards,

  killing without facing those we kill,

  without giving our victims a chance at us.

  Yell “Coward” up at the drone,

  then turn toward the air base and yell

  at it, “Coward! Coward! Coward! Coward!”

  Your voice carries all the way to Virginia,

  where the computer specialist is pressing the buttons.

  He hear
s you, wakes up, stops warring.

  HOME AGAIN

  Thank you, Wittman. Now go

  continue on the Silk Road all the way

  to its other end, in Soglio, where Taña awaits you.

  It’s Taña! My own dear wife.

  Rush into each other’s arms. Home.

  No rancor. No ambivalence.

  “I saw you constantly. I saw you everywhere.”

  True, blondes everywhere—Chinese

  with yellow hair, natural and chemical—each

  one startling—it’s Taña. My heart leapt.

  My heart fell—it wasn’t you. “Welcome, Love.

  Welcome back.” The red string holds.

  Hand in hand, the dear forever married

  walk through the piazza with the bell tower,

  and into the snow-topped mountains, stand

  for a time on the Soglio mesa, and breathe

  the good air between sky and far-down

  chestnut forests. Rilke, who walked here,

  advised, Change your life. Then westward

  home, where Mario, one and only son,

  has met his one true love, Anh Lan.

  Please, no arguing, live happily ever after.

  A long time has passed since I began

  the journey of this poem. Poetry, which makes

  immortality and eternity, did not stop

  time. In 4 years real time:

  MY DEAD

  John Mulligan

  Grace Paley

  Pat Haines

  Aunt Wai Ying Chew Lam

  John Gregory Dunne and Quintana Roo

  Ralph Swentzell

  Jade Snow Wong

  Vera Fessler

  Irene Takei Miura

  Roger Long

  Pham Tiến Duât

  Roger Allsop

  Carole Koda

  Alyssa Merchant

  John Griffin

  Sandy Taylor

  Ena Gibson

  Stella Jue

  Glenn Kawahara

  Gene Frumkin

  George Carlin

  Guanfu Guo

  Col. Kenneth En Yin Ching

  Bob Winkley

  Oakley Hall

  Capitano

  Marion Perkins

  Kazuko Onodera

  Laura Evelia Pérez-Arce Dávalos

  Kristi Rudolph

  Lawrence William Smith

  Ardavan Daravan

  Ian and Susan MacMillan

  Michael Rossman

  Auntie Nona Beamer

  John Leonard

  Eartha Kitt

  Jim Houston

  Mike Porcella

  Ron Takaki

  Eng Lay Dai Gwoo

  Jerry Josephs

  Naomi Gibson

  Roy Colombe

  Lucille Clifton

  Dorothy Langley Hoge

  Tom Pigford

  Archie Spencer

  Howard Zinn

  Donovan Cummings

  Henry Vallejo