{"id":6173,"date":"2020-07-08T22:18:19","date_gmt":"2020-07-08T22:18:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/?p=6173"},"modified":"2023-07-08T10:19:40","modified_gmt":"2023-07-08T10:19:40","slug":"soul-splitter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/posts\/soul-splitter\/","title":{"rendered":"The Soul-Splitter"},"content":{"rendered":"<style>\npre::first-letter { float: none !important; font-size: 100% !important; padding: none !important; font-family: \"Palatino Linotype\", \"Book Antiqua\", Palatino, serif; }\n<\/style>\n<pre>\r\n<em>A rich re-telling of a Chinese ghost story in play form.<\/em>\r\n<!--\r\n<a href=\"Soul_Splitter.txt\">Text File<\/a>\r\n<a href=\"Soul_Splitter.doc\">Word Document<\/a>\r\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.gregglory.com\/soulsplitter\/\">Web Site<\/a>\r\n\r\n<a href=\"#-SCENE-1\">Scene One<\/a>\r\n<a href=\"#-SCENE-2\">Scene Two<\/a>\r\n<a href=\"#-SCENE-3\">Scene Three<\/a>\r\n<a href=\"#-SCENE-4\">Scene Four<\/a>\r\n<a href=\"#-SCENE-5\">Scene Five<\/a>\r\n<a href=\"#-LAST-SCENE\">Last Scene<\/a>\r\n-->\r\n                          the gods corrupt\r\nus; though I never suffered their abrupt\r\nseductions, shattering advances, I\r\ntoo bear their sensual lightnings in my thigh.\r\nI too am dying.\r\n                      ----- Phaedra, Robert Lowell, Racine\r\n\r\n\r\nDAUGHTER\r\nHuman beings are to be pitied!\r\n\r\nOFFICER\r\nYou've found that out!\r\n\r\nDAUGHTER\r\nYes. Life is hard, but love conquers all.\r\nCome and see!\r\n                     ----- A Dream Play, August Strindberg\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n****\r\n\r\n\r\n<a href=\"#Top\">Top^<\/a>\r\n\r\n<a name=\"-SCENE-1\" id=\"-SCENE-1\"><\/a>\r\n<h2>SCENE 1<\/h2>\r\n     [Mrs Chang's visiting room.]\r\n\r\n<STRONG>MRS CHANG<\/STRONG>\r\nDear daughter, Chien-nu, always tapping at the mirror,\r\nalways sighing and saying, with infinite regret repeating:\r\n\"When will I be taller! Breasts, come out now,\r\nnow is the time for Wang Wen to arrive,\r\ndropping his glory into my life under the plum trees,\r\ntransfiguring the house-garden with romance.\"\r\nShe does not know what she says! She is not ready\r\nfor the love of a man, his mysterious speeches\r\nand strange allure. She is not ready to look\r\nsuch high excitement in the eye. Not yet, not yet.\r\n\r\n     [Enter <STRONG>SERVANT<\/STRONG>.]\r\n\r\n<STRONG>SERVANT<\/STRONG>\r\nMrs Chang! Mrs Chang! There is a stranger at the gate,\r\nand he has the look of trouble about his person.\r\nHe is smiling and whistling at the strangest things.\r\nChou-chou the old pup came running up to him, biting his silks,\r\nand he smiled as if he were being licked and kissed!\r\n\r\n<STRONG>MRS CHANG<\/STRONG>\r\nHe is too happy, for certain, whoever he is.\r\nThe years are too evil for this lightness of heart.\r\nFetch him in. I will discover his fancy plans\r\nand spit them out too; like these plum pits.\r\n\r\n[<STRONG>MRS CHANG<\/STRONG> spits out the pit of a plum she's been chewing\r\ninto a lacquer dish. <STRONG>SERVANT<\/STRONG> escorts <STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG> in.\r\nCHOU-CHOU is chew-chewing his pant leg.]\r\n\r\n<STRONG>SERVANT<\/STRONG>\r\nI am announcing a Mr Wang Wen.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nThe seven austerity-slackening courtesies\r\nto you, dear lady. What name's this rascal go by\r\nanyway: Nevah-been-fed?\r\n\r\n<STRONG>MRS CHANG<\/STRONG>\r\n                           The thousand fanning how-dos\r\ndue to a houseguest to you, Wang Wen.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nThank you. May the bones of your ancestors\r\nnever be played upon by your enemies.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>MRS CHANG<\/STRONG>\r\nThank you. Why are you here, Wang Wen?\r\nI did not call you out yet. But like\r\nan irreligious owl who forgets his devotions\r\nin the dark, you come blinking to my house\r\nin this early daylight.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\n                              The early thaw this year\r\nis uncustomarily gracious to travellers,\r\nand I am anxious to see the delights of the world.\r\nEven the most studious owl must sauce\r\nhis books with sunshine now and again.\r\nAnd I was soon to be on my way to the imperial\r\nexaminations anyway. So....\r\n\r\n<STRONG>MRS CHANG<\/STRONG>\r\nWhat have you got there, under that sly smile?\r\nWhat are you doing grinning and walking in here\r\nas if you owned the town?\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nI own myself. I guess that makes me happy.\r\nNot a lot to worry about, if you've only got yourself.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>MRS CHANG<\/STRONG>\r\nYou are a poor boy, now that your father's dead.\r\nYour inheritance fell to your brother,\r\nwho is off in the shipping business in Peking.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nI guess I came here to increase my sorrows\r\nand collect a wife promised to me before my birth.\r\n---No matter, I'll honor my familial obligations.\r\n\r\n[<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG> pokes her head into the doorway.\r\nShe watches silently.]\r\n\r\n<STRONG>MRS CHANG<\/STRONG>\r\nYour politeness covers discourtesy.\r\nStand there. Be silent.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\n     [Aside, looking at <STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>.]\r\nI am watching her. Is she seeing my heart?\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nI keep my careful eye upon his hands,\r\nnot regarding his face of moonlight\r\nunless he is turning away. This way,\r\nI keep my modesty. Oh, if he could only see\r\nhow my thighs and eyes are wet with sick waiting\r\nbeneath my embroidered silks and blue eyelids.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>MRS CHANG<\/STRONG>\r\n     [Aside, to <STRONG>SERVANT<\/STRONG>.]\r\nWhat is to be done! His family's penniless!\r\n\r\n<STRONG>SERVANT<\/STRONG>\r\nHe's got a cocky tilt to his head.\r\nThe proverb is: Be bold in all things.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>MRS CHANG<\/STRONG>\r\nHe's that, alright.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nEyes, eyes, how shall you master this brightness?\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nEach day, I shall end my day swaled and scented\r\nin his dark, consoling silks. Yes!\r\n\r\n<STRONG>MRS CHANG<\/STRONG>\r\n     [Sharply.]\r\nAnd you have not passed your exams yet. Is that right?\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nThe great mystery is before me.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nI am so tenderly made, if he looks at me again\r\nwith those oceans of his eyes, I shall dissolve!\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\n     [Closing his eyes.]\r\nEyes shut, mastering their darkness....\r\n\r\n<STRONG>MRS CHANG<\/STRONG>\r\nEverything's too uncertain. My first obligation\r\nis to marry my daughter well and increase\r\nthe family wealth.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\n     [Not bearing to look at <STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>.]\r\nHow is your daughter, Mrs Chang? She looks well.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>MRS CHANG<\/STRONG>\r\nChien Nu! Take Wang Wen to see the garden.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nYes mother, right away. Please, sir, this way.\r\n\r\n     [Exit <STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG> and <STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>.]\r\n\r\n<STRONG>MRS CHANG<\/STRONG>\r\nI've decided. No marriage until he passes his exams.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>SERVANT<\/STRONG>\r\nWhen he has the prize, he will be a prize,\r\nand Peking's embroidered ladies,\r\nwho buzz the examination's chambers\r\nand with beetle-brows overlook the winner's list\r\nwill attack his new carriage on the instant in the street\r\nlike june bugs on a gorse bush, madam.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>MRS CHANG<\/STRONG>\r\nStill, I've decided. No turning back now.\r\nWhat else can I do, hmm? Damn it all.\r\nIt's not easy being a widow\r\nand running things. You try it.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>SERVANT<\/STRONG>\r\nI am but a poor servant, and have no\r\ngreat household to run.\r\n\r\n\r\n<STRONG>MRS CHANG<\/STRONG>\r\nNor any prospect to get one, like that.\r\nStop your stropping back-talk, at once,\r\nor you could have the grandest roof of all\r\n--- under the stars.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>SERVANT<\/STRONG>\r\nI am silence.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n****\r\n\r\n\r\n<a href=\"#Top\">Top^<\/a>\r\n\r\n<a name=\"-SCENE-2\" id=\"-SCENE-2\"><\/a>\r\n\r\n<h2>SCENE 2<\/h2>\r\n     [The garden.]\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nOur green garden is not so dour\r\nas my widowed mom.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nHowever dour, I see she is yet adorned\r\nby her daughter's heightened blossoms.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nThe love-eschewing yew breeds darkly in her eyes.\r\nHer stunted, wounded earth is gashed wide alive\r\nonly to welcome cold coffins now.\r\nEven the bearded pinecone's winter seeds\r\n(accustomed to bring forth life in harshest seasons)\r\nare blown ungerminating across her lap of snow.\r\nShe'll have no other children besides myself.\r\nHer dirt heart's gone under with the onion,\r\nspaded sourly beneath life's sweetness,\r\nlayered away from our mutual doing light of day\r\nwith bitter remembrance for her only company.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nThere seems some wrongness in those so aloof\r\n(as a maiden bee that flies highest for her mating)\r\nthat they from Nature's sweet open treasuries\r\ncan receive no honied cup of succor\r\nfor their peculiar thirst, although the honey\r\nis such that thrives the busy, common hive.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nThis sensual glade is yet a pleasant garden,\r\nand for all the world I know none greener\r\nto foster loving endurance and courage\r\nbeyond the razing, raving times of grief.\r\nWhen summer's hushen heats proclaim\r\nthe healthful virtues of this quiet place\r\nloud as whispers, where this sun-bussed bank\r\nof daylilies blows, such tiny trumpeting\r\nas sounds out of the azeleas' muted throats\r\nsoundlessly aglow almost, until shy silence\r\nherself does seem to break her convent quiet\r\nand speak her matin prayers into the dawn,\r\nsuch triumphant trumpeting, I say,\r\n---though silent as ashes else---\r\nin my willing heart does find a hearing ear.\r\nAnd their beauty, their happy silent song\r\nI carry with me where I go.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\n                                   Strange story!\r\nWhat's the shadowy history of this\r\nhorn-crowed garden abrupt with trumpets\r\nthat find their choir in silences? This garden\r\nthat in busy brightness is so loud against my eyes\r\nit shouts the rainbow back to a single color!\r\nWhat has caused this prismatic miracle to occur\r\nback in some dark stretch of place that I\r\ncan't see the reasons now, and plain as burning,\r\nof how this singing garden takes the light so sunningly\r\nit outdoes the petalled flamings of the sun?\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nHere my father's buried, a spirit interred,\r\nthat gives to common dirt a holy aura\r\n(for they say a dear death makes questioning Life\r\nmore lucid for that afterlife's backlighting).\r\nMany cold gone dawns ago he broke his back\r\nupon his miller's waterfalling wheel\r\nand stopped their grinding gears with his grinding\r\nagonies. He screamed, as like to pierce the sky\r\nin which he hung, harmed and helpless above us....\r\nAnd then he came pulled back to ground by six men\r\n(forever calm and sage in peaceful death\r\nas in roaring life he was agitated)\r\nto lay like a firstling leaf inside a unplucked bean\r\nin his lacquered box beside those tumbledown graves.\r\nO he is not so restless in perfect heaven now\r\nas to come ghosting down among us again\r\nin any form of visitation. No, we never\r\nsee him at all, although I'd swear some acre of light\r\nin this garden knows him. And so my mom,\r\nguideless, assumes her more awful guises,\r\nfrowning at strangers, and repeating worn advice\r\nlike a pastor's long-memoried homilies,\r\nand stales her conversation. What masks we wear\r\nto visor our eyes from frank sunlight,\r\nhiding in our pretending skins! So she buries\r\nall her old hopes in old rituals again\r\nand again, inferring comfort from repetition.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nLead me; let's walk a narrow furrow farther on\r\nunseeded by death.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\n                             Every inching step of life\r\ntakes some print of poison as it goes--\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nAnd yet here what's buried does come again,\r\nand fragrantly inherits the air\r\nthat closets us about.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\n                              True. The crocus bud\r\nno matter how often shovelled under\r\nalways erects itself to find the spring again\r\nin fresh-gilded progeny, and stalks the new air\r\nfirst of all the flowers, although it is\r\nthe earliest dier too.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\n                                   First in death\r\nand first in life renewed.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\n                                      All mirror-backwards,\r\nthis procession that might be as easy\r\nas life to life, and life to life again,\r\nlacking blank death's heavy intercession.\r\nBut come; over there the weighty willow hangs\r\nin lofty ease, and makes even bouyant Spring\r\nan occassion for yawns and couches.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nIt seems a pleasant way away.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nIs it always the singing lesson of a fable\r\nto aria forth what artless nature shows us plain,\r\nand double in mirror-mangling singing\r\nthe simple doings of simple nature thus?\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nIf we could tell ourselves a story\r\nas awesome as a sun-headed daylily peers\r\n(and in humble glory out-judges the wildflower field\r\nthat hedges its soft nobility, adjourning\r\nall the meadow's mellow whispers with its sigh,\r\nin easiest happiness as ignorant as joy)\r\nso that merely to look upon its open hues\r\nor hear it shush the air that waggles it\r\nsteals the laurel from our painters\r\nand leaves our poor panting poets breathless,\r\nwhy then, I guess we could fable our existence\r\nfrom a syllable, history roses with new scents,\r\ncharm the sun to darkness with a black chant,\r\nriver mysteries from a melting stone\r\nthat first grew soft to hear us sigh,\r\nor any other catalog of impossiblities make true\r\nby the plangent puffing out of our sole breaths\r\nin the self-interrupted tossing cough of talk....\r\nwell, then we'd be a god and garden\r\nunto ourselves, and sunder thunder\r\nfrom its scariness with our kisses,\r\nmake peace with the twisting agonies of death,\r\nknow that all roads led home again,\r\nand never stir an inch, or desire aught,\r\nbut that we already had it, and in quantity,\r\nin ourselves in this our place-- complete.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nI myself am nearly told over in your telling\r\nand nearly convinced that such a power\r\nas lingers in the daylily has touched your lips\r\nand put some unused tongue of its mightiness\r\ninto your very speech. I would that I\r\ncould curl into your mouth and find myself\r\nreinvented in your breath. Speak again\r\nand I'll bend an ear to know if sassing nature\r\ndoes not silence herself to hear you.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>[<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG> breaks off a willow branch,\r\nbegins playing with it as <STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG> talks.]\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nChien Nu....hold this wily willow-wand\r\na moment between your fingers.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nI will. But why I should, I don't know.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nI myself will with continual grip\r\napprehend this distant end, and between us\r\nwill arise a rainbow of but one greeny hue\r\ntouching us both.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\n                             Yes, I feel your hand, almost,\r\nwithin the tender writhings of the wand;\r\nit is a curious connection.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nAnd one in which nature is complicit,\r\nfor she herself first shot forth the tie\r\ndrawbridged between us by our different pressures.\r\nI would swear I have your pulse's measure\r\nin motion through the sap.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\n                                            I too, almost,\r\nwould swear the same.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\n                                          And here we are,\r\nwithout abridgement, our whole selves entire\r\nand with all the enterprise of our minds engaged\r\nusing nature for our metaphor, our touch\r\nin transformation changing what is into what\r\nwas not. How like a pair of autumn-dusted trees\r\nstand we, whose overlapping branches\r\nby continual nearness of quiet years\r\nin shared garden shade have grown together,\r\nmaking of two tough roots one gentle bough.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nAnd that bough....\r\n\r\n<STRONG>MRS CHANG<\/STRONG>\r\n     [From offstage.]\r\nChien Nu!!\r\n\r\n[The lovers are inclining toward each other, but at <STRONG>MRS CHANG<\/STRONG>'s cry\r\nthey accidentally break the willow switch.]\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\n                         ....happy.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n****\r\n\r\n\r\n<a href=\"#Top\">Top^<\/a>\r\n\r\n<a name=\"-SCENE-3\" id=\"-SCENE-3\"><\/a>\r\n\r\n<h2>SCENE 3<\/h2>\r\n     [Chien Nu's room, and the open road.]\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nSince our hands have parted, bitter fingers\r\ncurl open as smoke, as empty. Vanishing\r\nto the horizon, my heart sighs for our hour in the garden,\r\npast times and harnessed laughter. Vanity!\r\nHe shall not come. Not today. In the spring wind,\r\nthe double gate knocks against itself:\r\nstone and iron, a terrible clanging.\r\nWound about like the ivy, my hopes and sorrows\r\ntogether; grievy and drenched, I slip\r\nto stillness, my hempen shoes go mossy,\r\nand I wait.\r\n\r\n     [We see <STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG> walking along the road, to his boat.]\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nSorrowful plum-leaves grieve the road red;\r\nblack branches mourn at their lightness.\r\nIf only my arms were weighted-down with Chien-nu!\r\nHow truly sad I am only a great architect can know.\r\nPlanning one thing, I accomplish another,\r\nmy designs become dusty memories of unlived utopias.\r\nExpectation cancels out reality, and I cannot\r\nbe where I am. And yet, I must depart.\r\nDesolate sounds scurry out of these absences around me.\r\nMy feet follow the road like strangers,\r\neach following the other out of mistaken hope\r\nthat one or the other knows where they are going.\r\n\r\n     [We see <STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG> in her room, mooning for <STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>.]\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nMy heart is entranced with its own beating,\r\nmy pulse is supported by thunder. Seeking love,\r\nI have doubled my sorrows. Now I shall try a remedy.\r\nThink of small things and narrow ways, my heart.\r\nDon't look at the sky too long, as if\r\nit were another shade of his eyes. Seek corners,\r\nconfer with baby spiders about their miniature hangings,\r\nwhite portraits in obscure places. Fold into a chair\r\nand let the armrests serve as Earth's four corners.\r\nLet your nose out-scope the horizon. Quiet, quiet.\r\nOh, to anchor my meditation in a sparrow's house\r\nand not among the wide world of his wanderings!\r\nMy heart, be still. Condense, contract your fistings---\r\ntitter and hymn with the mouse, modestly,\r\nand all will be well. And yet, and yet....\r\nI know; I will drink this yew-berry brew\r\n[[nurse had gathered in black lace stockings         [[don't use]]\r\nwith knowledgeable fingers plucking only\r\nthe thundercloud-colored ones at midnight,]] and sleep,\r\nand have no dreams, for this potion kills imagination.\r\n\r\n     [We see <STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG> in his boat, paddling upstream.]\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nDeep abiding flies from my heart.\r\nMy white feet wander where they will.\r\nThe ghost of Chien-nu visits the marshlands,\r\nher heaven's breath a freshness among all these rank things,\r\nher absent eye a beknighting diamond\r\nlighting the cage of stars that falls upon this heavy dusk,\r\nand I am lonely when her spirit stirs.\r\nHow can this be happening? Why this aching\r\nand betrayal of joy and justice?\r\nHas my imperial wish to succeed and be a bride's man\r\nclouded the clear lake we were to sail,\r\nfracturing its clarity with this turbid dirtiness?\r\n\r\n[In <STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>'s room, we see a second <STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\narise beside her bed, in ghostlike solemnity, and pace in peace\r\nthrough the window into the quiet countryside.]\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n****\r\n\r\n\r\n<a href=\"#Top\">Top^<\/a>\r\n\r\n<a name=\"-SCENE-4\" id=\"-SCENE-4\"><\/a>\r\n\r\n<h2>SCENE 4<\/h2>\r\n\r\n[<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG> is drinking wine on the river, bitterly missing\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>. Her soul appears, they talk and embrace, they make\r\nwild love, and she dissolves as he goes to drunken sleep. He is wild\r\nwith grief, but is overcome by desperate exhaustion.]\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nWhatever's in immortality, that's not in this wine\r\nI declare insufficient to the causes of infinity.\r\n     [Pause.]\r\nThe time is gone a little by when I,\r\na studious boy, threw down curious books\r\nto pull a blackeyed yew-berry through my hook\r\nand perditioned afternoons to pull up a trout.\r\nNight herself is losing her closeness, her darkness\r\nas I remember yesterday afternoon, which glows\r\nhow strongly in my lit recollection. How simply\r\nshe took her limpid tea to her tipping lips!\r\n     [Pulling on his fishing-line.]\r\nMy silvertongued hook pulls at the blackeyed yew-berries,\r\ndipping in triple-time to get a dripping fish.\r\n     [Hoists up an active trout.]\r\nAs hard to hold as a girl's attention!\r\nChien-Nu! My muscular wriggler, how I have tried-on\r\nyour whapping thighs in my whole heart's thought\r\na million searing times already! Chien-Nu!\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nWang Wen! How callous your hands looked\r\nas you left my side, your face open\r\nto the open window. How quickly you have\r\nleapt away! How barren my days and hours since,\r\nnothing in the garden to delight me, no walk\r\nbut your steps echo after mine, empty and emptier.\r\nNow I stand, all soul, and move past riverbanks,\r\nsashaying through skirting mountains as if they\r\nwere no more than magic lantern images\r\nthrown up in the theatre. Ah! If I\r\ndon't make it to the riverbank by dawn--\r\nhow far will Wang Wen have floated!\r\nWhen will he race back to our sandlot on horseback,\r\nthe wind prideful in his hair?\r\nSilent, faint, high and quick,\r\nmy ghost-steps dissolve to frosted banks,\r\nwalking the river's edge in tamped moonlight.\r\nA thousand mountains, a thousand streams,\r\ndash past my marauding eye, and are gone.\r\nHeart, heart, remembering the sad eyes that parted\r\npair by pair, like gingying birds to distant nests.\r\nSweat pearls against my aghast face, I race\r\nto his silent boat on the moorland,\r\nmy hair gone a thousand ways in the air-stream.\r\nMy faint feet are bruised with running.\r\nWhat tavern is he carousing at on the Chi Huai?\r\nSudden horses, calm voices, night, night,\r\nindistinct commotion opens beyond these willows.\r\nMy heart yatters at me-- speed, speed!\r\nIs that you beyond this solemn grove I've come to,\r\nbeating on a ch'in board and dropping soaked lines for fish?\r\nHere will I crouch, and hear what the west wind brings.\r\nInsinuations of my love-- float through this torpor!\r\nGrass at the sand's edge is slick with frost,\r\nmy green skirt hangs water-weighted to the ground,\r\nmy steps heavy and drenched slip to stillness,\r\nmy hempen shoes go mossy, and I wait.\r\n\r\n     [The sound of a ch'in board being beaten is heard.]\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nHow like a picture is everything now to me!\r\nThe bleak river at twilight, moon and moon in sky\r\nand on the river's flat: Heaven over my sad head\r\nand under my slow prow. How like an icy jar\r\nbrimmed with water, a jade without flaw.\r\nOn the far bank, a wild duck, green head and blue wing,\r\nwhirls alone his evening colors.\r\nDry vines tangle the darkness, old trees,\r\nancient figures in the mid-dark, ravens accosting the dusk.\r\nListen: the solo note of a flute, or is it\r\na girl singing? Her tender timbre is like that\r\nof my Chien Nu. Is it you, Chien Nu?\r\nChien Nu? Ah! how idle is my heart in this black.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\n     [Singing.]\r\nHear the lonely whippoorwill\r\nhe sounds too blue to fly;\r\nif my heart can't touch poor whippoorwill,\r\nI'll be so blue I'll die.\r\n\r\nSoftly, softly, whippoorwill,\r\noh can you hear\r\non the valley's blue and lonely rill,\r\nsoftly, softly, whippoorwill,\r\nmy voice to yours is coming, dear,\r\nno need for sadness now.\r\n\r\n     [We hear <STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG> singing.]\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nTalking to ourselves, we hear another;\r\nintrospection resolves into remembrance....\r\nmy tongue cannot tell a tale, but is caught\r\nkissing you-- the whole object and instance\r\nof its incessant wagging.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nA thousand feelings have a thousand voices,\r\nand all of them sigh away like you on this river to me.\r\nNearing happiness, we confront blunt dangers;\r\nsharpening our hearts for ecstasy, we bleed raw tears.\r\nWhichever way I turn, asleep or wandering wakeful\r\nyour immortal countenance confronts me;\r\nI hail my nursemaid: Wang Wen! Talking to mom,\r\nI spot you laughing over her shoulder, making faces.\r\nWhen any feet approach me, first I hear your sandals,\r\nthe sho-wood resounds with your coming\r\nand my heart knocks hollowly in time to the traffic.\r\nWhen I dash my face to my pillow in bitter disappointment,\r\nyour face is already there, and I can smell you;\r\nDeep in my pillow you comfort the fresh onrush\r\nof my distorted tears.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nIs there some spirit left in flesh that I\r\nfeel the winds' chill run thru my bones so,\r\na march of air upon my skin, and a march\r\nof upright gooseflesh answering?\r\n\r\n     [<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG> comes in sight of <STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>.]\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nWhy are you here, and how have you come, dear thing,\r\nout of what darkness is this vision resolved\r\nflooding my fouled obscurities with light?\r\nI cannot see you without thinking myself\r\ntoo soon blessed with daylight; I who had thought it\r\nshut and dungeoned from his sensible being\r\nin the eons since our leave-taking.\r\nHow, how, how, how, Chien-nu, are you here?\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nA desire asks me\r\n                  I seek not the reason;\r\nwhen a love that held me fast pulls me after,\r\nI go, were it even to damnation.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nBut Chien Nu, how are you here?\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nDo not ask again, for I myself do not know.\r\n\r\n     [They kiss, etc., etc.]\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nWhy this unspeakable clarity\r\n                   in the light's playfulness?\r\nPleasure's leisure and simple lease\r\nthus rapturously released?\r\n\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nOur bodies fell into confusion when we asked for love.\r\nFelt apparitions of some drumming weather\r\nsmote our bones, and now we arise\r\nskin-lashed from these matted grasses;\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nDesire came, swift to enter,\r\n                   turbulent at egress,\r\nsessions' cessation, the met wept hands\r\npalpitant, tired,\r\n\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\n                 worn smiles renewing laughter;\r\n\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nour thrown robes unioned on the peach-branch,\r\n     impatient for our bodies' return.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\n     [Satiated.]\r\nNow I know my body's body, that shape wherein\r\nmy imagination molds me. How does a tree\r\nhold itself up against the blue immensity?\r\nThe watchword of root and branch, bole and soul\r\nis this: I dream myself a tree, and therefore\r\ncome my buds pushing sugared airs away,\r\nsap and barking back hurl from seedling on\r\nto ancient limb and lightning'd hulk\r\nby the mute power of the dream's suasiveness,\r\nnot otherwise. Were I to blink and think myself\r\nan agile fish nervous beneath the agate stream,\r\na mere sixty white years, a death, a body's lapse,\r\nand I would wake re-sheathed in those glamours\r\nof new flesh, and gaze with sideswiped eyes\r\nat a world submerged; water-reeds would chasten\r\nmy agitations; my slim fins would cling\r\nto air only for the dim length of a breath\r\nheld, and I would die fossilized in the muds,\r\nmy skeleton the dream's only remembrance\r\nof having been dreamed. Oh spirit, oh self!\r\nGive yourself the will to recall such\r\na strength of dreaming when unconsciousness sets\r\nthee in thy sick-bed body again. Victim\r\nof this pernicious illusion never be again,\r\nnor drape your longings on so frail a hope\r\nas flesh.\r\n\r\n     [<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG> sighs and disappears.]\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nAh! how I am thrown, a rose into a furnace,\r\nand disappear in ashes. Eyes, curse yourselves\r\nto have gazed so longingly on love, to be\r\nrevenged by its absence to this nullity\r\nof night! Hands, clump and curl, wither back\r\nto stumps of somethings, to have touched\r\na radiance you are now denied. Oh every sense\r\nis by its saturation overthrown and burned\r\nwhen that fulfillment, though all unexpected first,\r\nslackens, and we roil lost in our new amplitudes\r\nof searing wants. My love's contestless softness\r\nsharpens every rearing dagger of that hurt\r\nwhich stabs me now. Uncoil, heavy soul!\r\nand into this shattering night disperse,\r\nas a campfire's disturbed smoke goes\r\nfrom greyness to nothingness beneath dull stars\r\nfor your final gladness. Cheating Time has put\r\nall my tossing future in his bone sack\r\nand knotted the lot with the garrote-wire\r\nremembrance. Absence inflicts!\r\nCourage comes not to these empty hands\r\nnor recalling eloquence to these lips---\r\nOh nothing do I know, I know,\r\nexcept what from me slips;\r\nwhen even my shapeless shadow from my body\r\nfalls, dissolute as night, how shall I\r\nrise to you, Chien-Nu, my shut light?\r\n\r\n\r\n<a href=\"#Top\">Top^<\/a>\r\n\r\n\r\n****\r\n<a name=\"-SCENE-5\" id=\"-SCENE-5\"><\/a>\r\n\r\n<h2>SCENE 5<\/h2>\r\n\r\n     [Chien-Nu, stirring awake in her sick-bed.]\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nA miraculous moment....\r\n\r\n<STRONG>NURSEMAID<\/STRONG>\r\nHere's gingsing, a spice to brighten wide\r\nrecalcitrant eyes and ease them into day;\r\nand here's tea, to uncrumple a stomach\r\nfed on nothing but a fever-pallet's madnesses\r\n--Ach! what a ferocious crowd of hours\r\nyou've spent in the naked solitude of sleep!\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nAn exquisite minute....\r\n\r\n<STRONG>NURSEMAID<\/STRONG>\r\nThree days a-bed; not even in my howling youth\r\ndid I maelstrom the bedsheets so!\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nThere was a storm pouring toward us\r\nfrom the horizon's crescent when I passed\r\nfrom daylight to my private dark.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>NURSEMAID<\/STRONG>\r\nAnd your hair is all a storm of tangles, lady,\r\nas if the city of your virginity had been sacked\r\nby handsome Mongols all these starry days thru.\r\nWell, there's a story I could maybe tell you:\r\nbut dark eyes keep their secrets and twinkles\r\nlongest, honey. Ach, enough!\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\n                                          Has the storm\r\nharmed aught in the orchard?\r\n\r\n<STRONG>NURSEMAID<\/STRONG>\r\n                                             Swill to the level\r\nof the laurel-daubed inner decoration\r\non this proffered cup, my bug. There, there!\r\nYour hair's a little less like a wild galaxy now.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nIs it day or night out? Whenever my eyes\r\nclose out the cloistering tapestries of this room,\r\nand these hanging gazelles bound beyond\r\nmy being's business for one second,\r\nI see him, I see Wang Wen, stretched in ecstasy\r\non a pallid riverbank, the near grass\r\nmelted back from its frost-freshness\r\nby some plenitude of his dreaming tears.\r\nAh! Wang Wen! This love-sickness is killing,\r\nmy crushed chest an aching whirlpool\r\namong your bruise-black torrents.\r\n\r\n     [<STRONG>MRS CHANG<\/STRONG> enters.]\r\n\r\n<STRONG>MRS CHANG<\/STRONG>\r\nDo not drown in such nothings, darling.\r\nI know we treasured imperial hopes of his appointment;\r\nsuch apportionment may be ours one day,\r\nor it may not. Sigh away your breath too long,\r\nlithesome one, and one day it shan't come back.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>NURSEMAID<\/STRONG>\r\nOh, my poor possum; upside down, and unconscious\r\nwith dreaming when the day is busy beneath you!\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nI cannot stand to lie unalive without him\r\none drugged moment longer! The cures I need are stronger,\r\nladies, than the soups and roots you proffer me.\r\nWild lightnings in dragging air, Wang Wen!\r\nCome touch forever what cannot be possessed!\r\nCaress an indomitable thigh, and tongue\r\na woman's heart damned to interminable daylight\r\nwithout you. Oh, those words, those crow-moans,\r\nwithout you! Where's the root of a longing\r\npurloined from the gods? I thieve ecstasies\r\nfrom your too-absent face, Wang Wen!\r\n\r\n<STRONG>MRS CHANG<\/STRONG>\r\nAppalling, this bitterness. [Aside.] Nursemaid,\r\ndouble her dosage. I'm scramming to get\r\nthe old priest. He'll tie her spirit in a knot\r\nso she cleaves here, and to us, once again.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>NURSEMAID<\/STRONG>\r\nOh, my poor possum.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nSince our hands met in a last goodbye, all's vanity\r\nand is vain; sight, that comprehends him not,\r\nvanity, ears that hear him not,\r\nvanity, touch that touches him not, nor is touched\r\nby him in sweet return, vanity;\r\neyes that close to a darkness absent him,\r\nvanity, eyes that open on a world unseeing of him,\r\nvanity, lips that open and kiss him not,\r\nvanity, my dumb tongue that may taste no remembrance\r\nof him, vanity, vanity, vanity, vanity.\r\nEvery sense is emptiness without him,\r\nand yet Bhudda-enlightenment escapes me!\r\nSure the bitterest cheat in life is leave-taking.\r\nThe thrush knocks not against the abyss of night\r\nwhen her lover dove is snared in the hunter's net\r\nwith one note more of longing, than I.\r\nWhen I speak, my breath is limp,\r\nno force follows my utterance, nor am I heard.\r\nInside myself, I am too weak to concentrate.\r\nWhen I lie down, I cannot fall together enough\r\nto even sleep. Fine wine is bread paste\r\nagainst my palette; spiced things come to my tongue\r\ntasteless, not even their effervesce survives.\r\nMedicine's effectless; no cure emancipates me.\r\nI know well when this hidden ill began,\r\nwhen his face evaporated from my approaches,\r\nI dreamed, and his arms held me not,\r\nI fell to the ground, hard on a tilted hip,\r\nand he was gone. If I am to be well again,\r\nit will not be until full sight of him\r\nis restored to me; my sundered senses re-soldered,\r\nmy million divisions viced to singleness and glued.\r\nOne minute, I am sheer lead, nailed to the bed,\r\nthe next instant, I am floating over the roof,\r\nviewing ruined landscapes that contain not him.\r\nNext, all is clear, I am myself again,\r\nmy body my body--- then all is confusion again,\r\nI float unroofed, rootless, aghast in terrible airs,\r\nblack winds, endless night, stretched agony,\r\nmy unattached spirit searches past each infinity\r\nblisses get mixed with heart-stabs, ecstasies moil\r\nwith rotten longings, diamonds flash to ashes\r\nin my uninhabited chest, I seek, and seek again,\r\ninvisible, fragrant, dispersed, all Eye and no eye,\r\nand I cannot tell the Heaven from the Earth.\r\n\r\n     [<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG> falls asleep.]\r\n\r\n<STRONG>MRS CHANG<\/STRONG>\r\nChild! Wake up!\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nSick already, what new sickness wakes me to appall?\r\nIs it my death? Come, black charger,\r\nand let the dark thunder of your monsterous hooves\r\nconsume my aching soul away! I am faint,\r\nfaint, a disappearing ink under thy trim nib,\r\nand am nearly cancelled from the lists of life.\r\nThis flustering weakness that I feel\r\ncan be nothing else than sweet Death hurrying near,\r\nkneeling to take his incisioning kiss.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>MRS CHANG<\/STRONG>\r\nThe priest is here; he's to heal your soul.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nAnd if my soul is elsewhere, on what\r\nshall he lay a hand to effect a cure?\r\n\r\n<STRONG>MRS CHANG<\/STRONG>\r\nI send for Wang Wen. I'll send somebody\r\nto ask him to come back. Pass or fail,\r\nI'll have him come here. Perhaps seeing him\r\nwill fix you up.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nToo late for your regret, your repentance, Mrs Chang.\r\nDeath has made me his mistress, and I am charmed\r\na little by is forthright solemnity; he's a sad child\r\nholding forth his one cherished clump of posies,\r\nhow could I refuse him?\r\n\r\n<STRONG>MRS CHANG<\/STRONG>\r\n                                             Survive, child!\r\nHe laughed at everything, and now\r\nto see how you grieve and wither. It's, well,\r\nits sore to me.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nI close my eyes and find happiness.\r\nI see him.\r\nWang Wen!\r\n\r\n<STRONG>PRIEST<\/STRONG>\r\n                       Stop it, child!\r\nYou are not to talk this way and aggravate your case.\r\nUntil Wang Wen is returned to the precinct,\r\nyou must rest and let others pray for you.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nI see from your grave habiliments, Mr Priest,\r\nthat you have endured a thousand deaths, a thousand ends,\r\nheld the hands of mourners by the ditch-edge\r\nuntil tiredness brought oblivion to mourning;\r\nwhat's one more slip-up, one less human remaining\r\nstill all a-stir above the dust that engulfs us?\r\n\r\n<STRONG>PRIEST<\/STRONG>\r\nDominae sanctum, tortoise purposum.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nI am touched with a burning hand;\r\nMy life is in my mouth, my mouth ingests the sky.\r\nLove falls to sickness in this wicked world,\r\nlike yesterday's drunk-high, asleep under the spring willow,\r\nlike cattails a-whirl over the meadow-path,\r\nswallows lofting the east wind, vaulting the pavilion\r\nsmall as childhood beneath them. I am young\r\nand I am cast away. I can't recover myself.\r\nWho cares about one's youth when one is in possession\r\nof it, even if one is throwing it away?\r\nPerfect days go shunting blindly by;\r\nmy longing blossoms darkly, sadness increases,\r\nfrost on the loved bud, blight against beauty.\r\nThe larks offer a most charming intensity,\r\ntheir lyric chunks against a wood head, my own;\r\nNature delights herself in display, not me.\r\nSimple sounds startle my sorrowful heart.\r\nLet me die today, avenging grief\r\nby shortening its tortures. Let me die\r\nwhile Spring is whistling its merriment outside\r\nand my argent soul may follow awhile\r\nfleets of flying flowers.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>PRIEST<\/STRONG>\r\nDominae sanctum, prolixus verbaenum, verbosus.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nI am struck down, if I am struck down,\r\nhalf human, half a ghost.\r\nOh, go away, and let me sleep.\r\n\r\n <a href=\"#Top\">Top^<\/a>\r\n\r\n\r\n****\r\n<a name=\"-LAST-SCENE\" id=\"-LAST-SCENE\"><\/a>\r\n\r\n<h2>LAST SCENE<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nI sit, and with concentrated brush put my flung tongues\r\non the calligraphy paper fluttering under my flat palm here.\r\nSoon I shall pass or fail these travailing exams.\r\nMy conscience is scrupulous as the wax that hold the wick,\r\na condensing tightness of melting colors\r\nhungering themselves liquidly around a flame.\r\nWhat shall be the outcome of all this light and smoke?\r\nTotal happiness, or misery unendurable?\r\nAll holds to its purpose; my mind is firm\r\nand my hand turns to this effort alone.\r\nI shall not wander from my scholarly concentration\r\nnor discourse with any darting dreams of Chien Nu\r\nwhile I make this exam cubicle my ruminating room.\r\nAll thoughts, marshall to mastery! Confucian mysteries\r\nsing! Knowledge hard-won and encoded,\r\nsee here, chirrup when I carol you!\r\n\r\n     [<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG> appears.]\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nCome and burn with might and immenseness!\r\nThrow down your books, your lives, and fly!\r\nThis empyrean stream invites an everlasting life,\r\nan aching socket for transcendental fire.\r\nCome, come, my one, my desire, my flame and fame,\r\neternity echoes emptily for me without your name!\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nChien Nu!\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nLook, your hand is cramped with knowledge,\r\nyour future life a tense battle of expectations,\r\nmyself prime among them. Help me throw\r\nboth your hand and your hurt away forever.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nChien Nu, you must tell me, how are you here?\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nI remember the river. I came. I am all\r\nat my spirit's lifeless bidding now, and have\r\nbut one hanging body's fragment of myself\r\ndying abed back home. My body's dying,\r\nimmolated in a fever; it was too weak a thing\r\nto touch so strong a desire as mine for long.\r\nMy insistent spirit discards its lilac casing\r\nand soon will blossom against the gasping stars alone.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nTo die, to cease. You ask this of me,\r\nyou invite me to my own destruction?\r\nIn such  a hurricaning leavetaking, love,\r\nwhat simple willow wand could stand assured\r\nthat it would whip back to the mate that left it\r\namid such hurried circumstance and rush of death,\r\nin such an overwhelming wind?\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nNone, my love.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nNone. None, none at all?\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nNo, my love. Not a single assurance\r\nmay slipstream from my ghost-mouth now,\r\nall drawn to you and the truth. And yet,\r\nI ask. Come to me, die to me, my love.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nMy body's a tissue against wishes so strong!\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nThen flash it to a thinness of ashes\r\nand step these airs and fires your breath\r\ninsists I inhabit.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nThere is an adoring glory in this agony\r\nI embrace to taste you again, Chien Nu!\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nHow can there be agony in a flesh dismissed\r\nto inexistence by our twinning wishes?\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nIs there a human summation in this finish?\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nNever, never, never, and never!\r\nThere's only us, silvertongue.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nChien Nu....\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nBut step to this certain synergy, sweet sweet one,\r\nand all's a tasteless ecstasy tongue's absence makes.\r\nDivine the radiant choice you uplift in joy to take\r\nand all else swirls away from you into 'below.'\r\nHere, first burn your exam. There. It is easy,\r\nsee how the light takes the paper?\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nI see. I see.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nSo shall it be with you. A touch\r\nof immortality and all your mundaner self\r\nwill wither and resolve to such a miniature sun.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nA sun. A day I shall never see.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nA central intensity, certainly. My dear, here,\r\ngive me some dark lock of your hair.\r\n\r\n     [<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG> cuts off some of his hair, hands it to <STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>.]\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nA handful of raven's feathers. It is well.\r\nThere. See? It is you I burn here, and it\r\nis not you. How easily will the rest fade\r\nto this spirit's lightness. Do you see it going\r\nup and up, the drifting smoke, while the flared hair\r\nall vanishes at the line of the brightness?\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nI see. I see.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nTake this oil lamp's instructive illumination, now,\r\nand pound it open upon the coarse reed mat.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nShall I do this?\r\n\r\n[<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG> takes the lamp and smashes it upon\r\nthe floor. All goes up in immense flames of destruction.]\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nI can barely speak into this black brightness:\r\nspoken floods of germinal loves choke black,\r\nunderlit by your wordless countenance's\r\nunifying perfection. Look, the fire talks along\r\nmy ink-stained robe, all whispers and insistence;\r\nits not too late to snuff them to deafness....\r\nOh, Chien Nu; oh I long to be with you!\r\nAnd yet my heart, like a double-drawn bow\r\nthat has two arrows fletched and at the ready,\r\none marked white for life, and the other black as death,\r\nI would live and die at once. I'd have both arrows\r\nknock against the rattling target. Desires spike\r\nmy anxious limbs, and a rain of heavy nails,\r\nmy devouring fears, frame liaisons with this flesh,\r\nentangling neurons against my spirit's\r\nunbinding willingness to die, and so live with you.\r\nOh the strings are at my back, and I am prepared to fly\r\nall ways at once.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\n                          All ways move my way always.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nMy heart is dense. Why do these motivating tensions\r\nof a free will tied to my body's estate\r\nharp on their unknotting as my own loose end?\r\nMust it be so?\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\n                             Will it be so?\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nHave your spirit's revelations becalmed\r\nthese aching wires of unknowing that burn within my chest,\r\npulled tight in anxious apprehension of my future state?\r\nWhat will happen to me? Shall we meet on the other side,\r\nto picnic upon that dread and death-rich turf\r\nas carelessly as children after school? Or shall I\r\nravel back the whole, sweet fruit of my life to one\r\ndark, shucked skull teneting an unhosed hole?\r\nShall I die to be free?\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\n                                     Shall you?\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nI do not know I do not know I do not know!\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nMove to me; as light must beckon light, I ask.\r\nDearest, the conflicting flames that your body throws\r\nbut backlight your more incandescent soul.\r\nSweet let the light I am indite the darkness\r\nthat your kneeling body crimps to feel; one touch\r\nand all's a raiment rayed in peals of laughing light\r\nwhere not one shadowed echo of a shadow goes.\r\nMove to me; as cool water tempers a burning bone,\r\nlet my love's assuring peace and quiescent licence\r\ntouch some momentary quaver of yourself, sweetness,\r\nwhere no fleshly feeling, precursing ecstacies, goes.\r\nI gospel a romance that shuns infirm grace,\r\ndevouring reticent roses in its holy, violet spires\r\nof spuming firelight once held in living vision's\r\nsparse intensity. You die, and that which once\r\nhad moved and loved only on the lowly, sodden earth,\r\nrestless for intensities, now all in one glory\r\nresides among the rafting fires of eternal shine.\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nHave I done this?\r\n\r\n<STRONG>CHIEN NU<\/STRONG>\r\nYes.\r\n\r\n\r\n<STRONG>END<\/STRONG>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nNOT USED:\r\n\r\n\r\nThe day fall off to badness, and time starts\r\nto see its own bedraggled face in eternity.\r\n\r\nWould you have all your golden corn\r\nrobbed, gnawed to a raw cob?\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<STRONG>WANG WEN<\/STRONG>\r\nPowerful over the prow of my unsteady self\r\ncame this unmastering impulse\r\n\r\n<STRONG>MRS CHANG<\/STRONG>\r\nWell, Wang Wen is on the road. He must return\r\nwith the imperial stamp on his lolling forehead,\r\nor no Chien Nu.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A rich re-telling of a Chinese ghost story in play form. the gods corrupt us; though I never suffered their abrupt seductions, shattering advances, I too bear their sensual lightnings in my thigh. I too am dying. &#8212;&#8211; Phaedra, Robert Lowell, Racine DAUGHTER Human beings are to be pitied! OFFICER You&#8217;ve found that out! DAUGHTER <a href='https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/posts\/soul-splitter\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001002,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1740,1759],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-plays","category-soul-splitter","category-1740-id","category-1759-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001002"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6173"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7357,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6173\/revisions\/7357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}