* * *
Peacock
So much love, and it can do nothing against death!
—César Vallejo
It lies by the motorway’s rain-shrouded
shoulder, motionless & mud-robed. Orphaned
__________by the morning sky’s sparsely starred veil.
An overlooked martyrdom of bloodied
plumes. Green sail, unfurled, of a thousand
__________wild eyes: some wide as if stunned
by a clean death’s swiftness, others
half-shut, exhausted by the afterlife
__________or else lamenting its emptiness, yet
each one still glistening turquoise under
the featherweight mirror of a raindrop—
__________feathered eyes still swaying the way a clique
of crocuses leans into the wind’s tuneless
dirge, impaling their throats on the pale
__________let-down branches of the sun. Birdsong
made sweeter by the birds’ silence. Rain
made more eloquent by its own absence
__________& narrow sky clear as a strip of sheer
blue gauze. I stand in the not-song
& not-rain and weep in open daylight.
__________I weep for a loss though many would say
it’s no loss at all. It was an accident. The bird
deserved it for its sin of pride. You should save
__________your grief for the humbled dead ones,
like the swan frozen by the pond or
the dove cut down by a child’s slingshot.
__________So what’s the harm then? Why grief
like a hidden deer leaping straight
from the heart’s fountain? Still
__________I weep and no one, not even the river
that turns back in its sun-streaked longing,
understands my tears’ limpid
__________ceremony. No one understands the dirt hill’s
loneliness except the hill itself—who
loved the arrogant peacock with the secrecy
__________& devotion of a trailing shadow, who loved
and admired the silly bird in flight even
though it chased and loved another
__________of its own kind. It seems I weep for a love
even I myself do not understand. My grief
is nothing compared to the hill’s, whose love
__________will remain alive in the gleaming of every
leaf & silence of every stone. So much
love, and still, it can do nothing against
__________death. Still, the bird does not rise. It lies
with its head buried in the creased heap
of mud like a bride slumped over her beloved’s
__________grave, having cried herself to sleep
and would not awake until the dead rose
from the grave, shiny & whole as a prophesy
__________fulfilled. Just imagine the rain returning
with its handful of harp strings, shivering
into a joyous glissando: a blessing for the raising
__________& the reunion. So, my bride. My martyr.
My miracle-worker. My sole consolation
amid the listless indifference of the world.
__________Rise now. Cast off the gray net of your sleep
the way I’m learning to scour the work of
sorrow off my cheeks—my head entombed in
__________the lush foliage of your plumes as I try, in vain,
to roll away these unwanted pearls.
* * *
Riverborne
were I to wake, ripple-cinched
_________& desireless, among frost
____-bleached fleece of reeds
were I to rise, heat-swallowing, from the slip & spill
______of a billow through hush
___________________________-enthroned rushes
while in the faltering light of a gesture
______or the unraveled bouquet of each echo
my unhitched spit of silt & pith rings true
___________the way jostled cups of bone china do
_____with their fluvial music of bone against bone
the way silence travels—not as a mean chase
______of rose confetti nor
_____________a torn wreath of vying doves
______but as the banked snow of waves crashing
onto the foam-encrusted shore of
____________the unsayable: fluid syllables of a heron’s
_____flight: the redness of a battle cry that wheels
____________like rain across the sky
as it wakes & wakes swift white wings
__________________________out of the bird’s sun-loud soul
* * *
Gavin Yuan Gao (they/them/xe) is a genderqueer immigrant poet. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in New England Review, the Cincinnati Review, the Journal, Foundry, The Offing and elsewhere. Their first book of poems is forthcoming from The University of Queensland Press in 2022.
featured photo by NAUSHIL ANSARI from Pexels
