Two Poems by Calvin W. Johnson

Ukiyo-e (the floating world)

The world is a porcelain cup floating
	upright, unfilled, in plum wine sky at dusk.

My thought of you are blue strokes brushed
	onto the brim of the world,
reverie of landscape as delicate
	as the heron beneath the willow.

I remember we ate tea-smoked duck, and sweet
	flesh of mussels, and you laughed.

At dusk I walk beneath plum bark branches to drown
	my sorrow. The half moon is pale
and fat like an oyster. I drink down the sky and float
	away, unmoored in the current.

Soot rises from candle like winter sparrows.
	Your pale naked hip curves like a wheel of stars.

In the street, drunken party-goers carry paper
	lanterns lit up like constellations. I shout
at them to hold still, that I might count
	their number and through geomancy divine

the source of your sadness in some distant
	cold mountain, But they laugh at me, spilling


sparks and wine, and I lose count of their faces
	and the brush strokes I have painted
and the lines in this poem, so I start all over again, counting
	how many starts and how many 

miles it is to you.


The Runaway Universe

The astronomers, bearded men
in tweed jackets, blame inflation
for her flight. Stretched thin,
she’s little more than emptiness
dimpled by the burden of her children
the stars. Long ago she cradled them
in arms made luminous by bonfires
the color of mother-of-pearl,
sang tin-can lullabies with the radio.

Then some darkness— terror, rage,
maybe loneliness— smothered the flames,
billowed out like a pillar of smoke,
chased her across stagnant lands.
She tried to scrub the stench from her skin
but only wore herself down
to the faint chalk outline of her body.

Stars like fat-bellied babies
squall abandoned and bobbing 
in dishwater currents, and the radio 
carries the staticky sounds
of distant  ocean waves,
wind rubbing itself against a roof,
rain on glass.

The astronomers, their breaths
like fireflies in the cold damp air,
kiss their telescopes goodnight
and go home to wives sodden with sleep.
Above all their heads
the universe flees on milky bare legs,
her dreams scattered like flour footprints 
on black marble kitchen floors. 

Calvin W. Johnson