The Naming of a Crow

from somewhere invisible
the crow kicks aside blocks of autumn cloud with its toes
and dives into the sky in my eyes hung with the wind and the light
the sign of the crow     sulphur brew of a nun of black night
croaking and piercing a hole in a flocking bird mattress
to perch on a branch in my heart
just as in the days of my youth     conquering crows’ nests in the treetops of my home town
my hands     will never again touch that autumn landscape
hands scaling another tall tree     intending to pluck another crow
from its darkness
crow     once it was a kind of bird meat     a pile of feathers and entrails
now     a desire for narrative     the impulse to speech
and perhaps     it is self-consolation in the face of adversity
escape from a mass of inauspicious shadow
this kind of labour is invisible     compared to childhood days
reaching with my bravest hand     into black nests full of pointed beaks     this is even more difficult
when a crow     perches in the wilds of my heart
what I wish to give voice to     is not is symbol     not its metaphor or its mythology
what I wish to give voice to     is crow     just as in years gone by
I never found dove in a crow’s nest
since childhood     my hands have been covered in the thick calluses of language
but as a poet     I have never given voice to     a crow

with the circumspection and far-sightedness of age     proficiency in various inspirations     styles and rhymes
just as when one begins to write     dipping the brush deep into the ink-well
I thought     that the syllables     had to be drenched in black from the very start     to handle this crow
skin     flesh and bones     the flows of the blood as well as
the flight-paths disclosed in the sky     all drenched in black
a crow     begins in this blackness     in flight towards an outcome drenched in black
from the moment of birth it enters into solitude and prejudice
into universal persecution, pursuit and capture
no bird     it is crow
in a world full of evil     every single second
ticks its ten thousand pretexts     in the name of the forces of light or beauty
guns are trained on this living representative of the powers of darkness     and fired
but for all that it cannot escape beyond the bounds of crow-being
neither fly higher     encroaching on eagle territory
nor condescend     to the lowly realm of the ants
cave-maker of the skies     both its own black hole     and black drill-bit
on high and alone     from the heights of a crow
it sets a course according to its bearings     its time     its passengers
it is one happy-go-lucky     big-mouthed crow
and outside it     the world is a mere fabrication
no more than the boundless inspiration of crow
you people     the vastness of the land and the sky     the vastness beyond the vastness
you people     Yu Jian and ensuing generations of readers
are nothing but food in the nest of a crow

I thought     that a few dozen words would be enough     to handle this crow
description has made it     a black box in words
but I do not know who holds the key to the box
who thinks up secret codes in crow-darkness
in another description it appeared as a priest wearing puttees
beneath the mighty walls of Heaven, this holy one     in search of an entrance
but I know now     that the abode of the crow     is closer to God     than the priest’s
perhaps while perched on the spire of a church one day
it saw the fair body of the Nazarene
when I describe the crow as a swan nourished on the everlasting blackness of night
the actual bird     shining with the light of a swan     flies past that radiant swamp beside me
and at once I lose all faith in this metaphor
I attach the verb to descend to its wings
yet it soars to the Ninth Heaven like a jet
I call it taciturn     and it immediately comes to rest on wordless
as I look at this lawless wild witch-bird
a swarm of verbs is drawn     to my head     crow verbs
I cannot utter     tongue fastened down with rivets
I see them speeding up into the sky     vaulting
diving down into the sunlight     then gathering again above the clouds
leisurely and carefree     forming crow-motion pictures

that day     like a hollow-hearted scarecrow     I stood in an empty field
and all my thoughts     were steeped in crow
I clearly sensed that crow     felt its dark flesh
its dark heart     but I could not escape the sunless fortress
as it soared     so I soared
how would I ever get back out of crow     in order to catch it
that day     when I looked up into the blue sky     each crow was already drenched in darkness
a corpse-eating crowd     I should have turned a blind eye earlier     in the sky of my home town
I stalked them once     so innocent then
a whiff of the stink of death     and I’d panic and loosen my grip
as for the sky     I should have kept my eyes on the skylarks     white cranes
how I love and understand those beautiful angels
but one day     I saw a bird
an ugly bird     the colour of crow
hanging from the grey ropes of the sky
with mangled legs     stiff and straight as the limbs of a puppet
in crooked flight on the slopes of the sky
circling a centre of some kind     out tracing
an enormous insubstantial circle
and I heard a chorus of ominous cawings
suspended somewhere out of sight
and I wanted     to say something
to declare to the world     that I was not afraid
of those invisible sounds

1990

THE NAMING OF A CROW