air quality index
one of the last known plagues,
smog rides in
with a cold front
first in the sky, then the back
of the throat
brings on bad
tempers, smothers us like a sweaty palm
or a rag
in the mouth
each morning daguerreotyped
on my eyes:
flash of brassy light, then curtains
clinched together
heaters chafe
all day in cafes
men poach in the great grey sheaves
of their coats,
stutter emails while soda purrs
over gin
towers inch
out of sepia fog
cats stand on the brown brink
of their shadows
as cabs drift behind their lights
and in backseats
passengers crack
like knuckles
in double-thick jackets
it delivers us back
to a bronze age:
the godless howl of power
tools abandoned
and across the river –
crusted with coal boats
and iceless all winter –
more smog
where factory workers are sent
home fractured
like ice just dropped
in a drink
Rabindranath Tagore appears in Lismore, NSW
Today, jetlagging
through this hemisphere’s
tar-melt afternoon
in the weatherboard library,
I find, between pleated
copies of Rilke
and Yeats,
the collected poems
of Rabindranath Tagore,
whose bronze head
stands on the corner
of my street
in the city
I have just left.
It is as if I am back
on that wishbone
of road in Huangpu: he faces
the yóutiáo stall
where I’d stand in line
on Sunday mornings
and each
week, repeating xièxiè
as I took
the crisp dough,
I would turn
towards home
and meet
my eyes
in his eyes.
