Attributed to Qu Ding

Mark Sullivan

Though we gather ourselves

out of this hush（安静，肃静）, out of these summer palaces

and mountainside pavilions（楼阁，大帐篷）, from the absence

of sound that attends the ending of a sudden shower,

and the return of daily sounds rushing into this void --

geese signaling their pleasure, laundry clapped

against stones -- we will never be more

than apart from all this. It makes a kind of clothing

that we wear, outfit not fashioned

for comfort or protection, but as though an alb

made of mists hung in the vestry（教堂法衣室）,

awaiting certain ceremonies

and sacraments（圣礼）, the evening's late hesitation

above the river, the avenues turned to glass

in the chemistry of rain. Nothing, it goes

with everything, and so we bring it out

as one might have the imperial librarian descend

to the archives for the scroll on sized

silk and uncoil its soft cinema

between royal hands, right to left.

This pastiche of light, this allegory of weather

where the rain stands for the fertility of rain

and the host peak and its attendants range like a court

that will rule forever, but with the benign

impartiality of rock and water. Whether memory

or mirror we could hardly say,

yet this slip of cloth woven from unwound cocoons（蚕茧）

and deepened with valleys and sheltered retreats

seems to give us back to ourselves,

an urgency of air we hadn't noticed

but was with us all along, when the wind, for instance

came in through the window with transparent messages

that announced the storm and were the storm.