Unipolar Rupture Poem by jia shuixing

she was the one that taught me the supreme, life-saving skill:
when the storm rages -
and it rages all the time,
the world is always in collapse outside.
inside it burns without a break behind the eyes
- the trick is to stay silently
and perfectly
still.

almost dynamically still -
the light comes in to fizz a canvas on the mind,
the breath is short and firm.
the arms triangulate a little space, then freeze.
all else, all else i guess goes out -
a song thus simplified can be anulled, predicted -

the verb 'to abstract away' might do.
repeat a word until you're meaning-deaf, you know?
and just like this:
the swallowed-up non-rhythm for the soul can be tapped perfectly into.
the music then becomes the metronome itself,
and fades away.
within the storm,
the silence and the light are now the same,
all dissonance an echo to dismiss.
- and this unfolds for years, decades on.

the stormhold casts terrible shadows in daytime.
the tunnel-towers pulse inside and underneath the ground -

the stars, however, from the top...
are clear, crisp,
and many,
and complex.
and sweet.
and bright - but dark enough to see
and homely, well-defined,
and even soft;
and strong
and fair
and total
and in that timeless moment, all-complete.
and piercing, solid, endless, full -
and stable, ordered, slow,
exact - and without equal, without flaw,
each one, and then all them at once, unique

and made of pure and ten-thousand-times distilled
- awe