Tuesday Poem - 'Spirited Questions Overheard' by Michelle Leber

SPIRITED QUESTIONS OVERHEARD

Very Old Madame Yin Asks Very Old Minister Yang:

The evening, too brief for idleness, must you chatter

on the subject of fresh air and unobstructed spaces?

Tossing — more than ideas in your bed,

why are you restless like Mounting Stag?

Too much happiness? Perhaps you need

ask physician if extravagant joy is injurious to the Heart?

Very Old Minister Yang Asks Very Old Madame Yin:

Memory prefers a nap — again I enquire

which part of you is like a watercourse?

After your name circles my lilies,

silver hair flowing like Celestial Horse,

can doubt and panic be left behind?

I cling to your answers — for what purpose

did we meet halfway up the mountain

to glimpse light and dark in each other's eyes?

From Notes On Text

extravagant joy is injurious to the heart (from Huang Di Nei Jing

translated by Ilza Veith).

I feel so very fortunate to be right in the thick of so much

marvellous poetry-making. Recently I went to the launch

of Cocky's Joy by Michael Farrell (Giramondo) and that is

a book and a half. As Laurie Duggan writes in the blurb —

“You feel there's a language being created here and yet it's

your own language.” So true.

And I came home to re read The Yellow Emperor by Michelle

Leber (Five Islands Press) to bring myself to the point where

I could pick just one for my Tuesday Poem deal, and there was

another wonderful book, a book and a half, under my hand.

Two wonderful books in one night! And of course the language

Yellow Emperor is couched in. What very difficult choices the

poet made, and with what a deft hand she made them. With

what subtle and seductive artistry. I did find this book a bit

of a struggle at first. Michelle has given us a foreword and

some after-notes to place us in the historical/legendary

milieu — just enough, not too much, not too little — so I

wasn't lost in that sense. What lost me was that I pride myself

on being a bit of a literary detective, and I could not penetrate

where this book had come from! I could sense an aftertaste

of Arthur Waley, and maybe a soupcon of Ezra Pound. But

none of my reading, which has been westerncentric, could help

me place the provenance. Of course, Michelle has been a lecturer

and clinician of Chinese Medicine for over twenty years. That

has informed the book. But what helped me in the end to get a

grip, was a certain sort of elliptical and enigmatic French film,

where the rules of engagement in conversation have a rock/

paper/scissors tone, and wit always wins.

To quote the last lines of the last poem in the book 'QI, Blood

And Essence' —

'Remember, the emperor and I

know where you live.'

http://fiveislandspress.com/catalogue/yellow-emperor