East Side

In the deserted village, sunken down
With a shrug of last weak old age, after the shells
All people are fled, or killed. Not one mild house
So much as a sparrow hears on earthen floor,
Walls stand, but cannot live without the folk they loved –
It will be a bad thing to wake them.
Having smashed the rice-bowl, do not fill it again.
The village temple, well-built, with five smashed gods, ten whole ones
Does not want prayers. Its last vain prayer bled up
When the women ran outside, to be slain.
A temple must house its sparrows, or fall asleep,
Therefore a long time, under his crown of snails,
The gilded Buddha demands to meditate.
No little flowering fires on the incense-strings
Startle Kwan-Yin, whom they dressed in satin –
Old women sewing beads like pearls in her hair.
This was a temple for the very poor ones –
Their gods were mud and lathe: but artfully,
Wistfully, in the well-appointed colours
Some broken artist painted them all,
Wooden dragons are carefully carved.
Finding in mangled wood one smiling, childish tree,
Roses and bells, not one foot high,
I put it back at the feet of Kwan-Yin.
Showing mercy one mercy.
A woman’s prayer-bag
Having within her paper prayer, paid for in cash
Perhaps for a fighting son,
Perhaps for the little son who sought not her womb,
This I took, seeing it torn.
No prayer can I answer, or understand –
What prayers were answered, those last red nights?
Carrying her bag around the course of the world,
I shall often think ‘My sister I did not see
Voiced here a dying wish.
But the gods dreamed on. So low her words, so loud
The guns, that death-night, none could stoop to hear.’