Birgit Bunzel Linder Poems

In a cozy café in Suzhou
one can browse The New Yorker and Doris Day.
(Both old, incidentally)
Greece on the wall,
...

Trees walk the shore and shoo
the wind away. They shake off the noisy birds
and criss-cross the golden sun. They puncture
the clouds and dip their new fingers into ink
...

When you died
there was still a mass
production of filigree
in the sky
...

A gravedigger homeward plods,
Wearied from our riotous world,
To plow for what was once so dear,
“Far from the crowd’s ignoble strife.”*
...

A yuefu-themed poem

Sunrise in the south reaches the marble mansion in Cedar Grove. This house has a lovely girl, whose name, they say, is Brocade Grace. “She is skilled with the loom, and picks cotton clouds west of the wall.” Her basket is made of cinnamon shoots, its handle, an arch carved of Karnataka wood. When she walks, her raven black hair trails in a tress like curved hanging pods, and her silver bracelets jingle faintly like wind bells from India. Her ears hold twin moon pearls, to brighten her blouse of saffron damask, even her gauze skirt below. When passers-by see Brocade Grace, they drop their loads and stroke their beards. Young men with scrolls forget their scrolls. Young girls’ half-lidded eyes cast askance glances toward her. How many springs has this beauty seen, they ask?
...

“Why don’t you use your own language
to write? ” the poet asks over lunch.

A mother tongue
...

The hu
the man
the human
how to de-fetishize?
...

When the bell tolls twelve,
the scholar carefully ties
his Caponi leather shoes
and rises to return
...

The sky suddenly wreaks havoc upon us,
pours down clear from blackened clouds,
flooding the heart’s lingering drought.
...

You don’t want to be one
Who puts up fences.

“I believe, ” you say,
...