RIBBONS

It seems
all leaders
arrange young girls
in pleasing chorus-lines of welcome
on tarmacs grey as politicians' suits
young beauties flinging sunlit ribbons
at the shadow of a Deng Xiaoping
are doing cartwheels on the old reels
of Nazi propaganda films
and dancing in red leather boots
across Red Square
their hair in flight
like ribbons
in the winds of change
they stay
fresh-faced and open-armed
seemingly unharmed
by those old men
who use them
as a guise for death and other lies
and look to them
for immortality,
at least
a ribbon on the wind
between the two realities.

NAMELESS

What is the name of this rock
which responds to the sharp grey blade
by splitting into fine layers
made smooth as blackboards
by some molecular peculiarity?
Perfectly cleft
they can be separated sliding
or left
in layered stack facsimile of the original
whole
cliffs accordingly could fall
like guillotines
and set adrift the continents
on aimless seas.
The nameless please themselves.

WAITING FOR THE TRAIN

The river is silver slatted, hardened by a light
that comes from somewhere secret at the city's glassy edge.
It chops the water into small facets
too sharp, too hurtful to my eyes
to carry any image of what your face is like.
Your face is like a memory returning in flashes
and liquid like the river retreating with its tides
You're undefined.
I stand on the platform waiting for a train
at the far end of the cold station
where there are no tracks but just a wire fence
between the platform and the river
and the fragile thought that I might see you again.
You shimmer on
like mirrors on a mirror ball
a hundred of your faces flash against my retinas
and none of them is safe enough to touch
and none of them is true enough to resurrect the city
as a place of hope.

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