That sound is the thrashing of paper lanterns against the eaves.
Vessels frail as bodies lit with incandescent blood,
what else but that to survive the storm? What else could there be
to hold back the darkening rain of the city, empathy
like an opal, sorrow like a shriveled raisin
in the dust beneath the stove
but still a raisin. Pockets of odd coins, lint
to speak for transience and the rusted metal of fallen leaves,
paper cups with pastel scrimshaw elephants or diamonds, whatever
yolk the dawn subscribes for our delectation,
whatever throne the night sees fit to claim from the angels.
Difficult, difficult. All of it, any of it—
schoolgirls, vendors of sunglasses, businessmen
trembling their woes toward destiny and sleep—to feel it
or perish in the wicks of unlit candles,
to begin again within the inked shells of Easter eggs.
Steam is rising from grates, a child
pedals a bicycle through the alleyway of ghosts unafraid.
Purity, the maw of it, blackbirds and kestrels
against a sky the color of antique mah-jongg tiles, color of aspirin
dissolving in seawater as the sun bursts its amnion
of tattered clouds like the raw carcass of the heart revealed.
That sound is the ticking of paper lanterns in the storm.
Just that. It is hard
in the radiance of this world to live
but we live.