Maureen Owen

 

DAYS & NIGHT'S
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This is certainly not a painting     by Ni Tsan 
a fourteenth century master    whose obsession was 
cleanliness     his sparse landscapes   practically all
brush    & hardly any inkwash                   But more
in the style of Shen Shih-ch'ung    his milky  monochrome
The Pavilion of the Luxuriant Trees          where
two figures     discussing on a balcony      seem to be immersed
in a pile of Necco wafers
                            & you & I    go out of the house
& scream     "Fuck you!"     at each other     in an open field 
hurling a bottle of Rolling Rock      (two good sips still left!)
into the dark      all because of a paragraph   in the
New York Times magazine section      describing        a
serious young woman machinist    as    "loving the arc
of the welding torch      and the flow of the molten
steel"       & I said    "sexist"     over your shoulder     & we
left the lake early.
                                Water 
and a preparation of pine soot    & the pines    so thinly 
arranged      the painter gazes     out of a wicker window
into rectangular fog          Obviously no one has ever
told him    he lacks depth perception!          Below
his spongy jowls     his palms    must be sleeping
on his knees    crushed in the folds     of blue bamboo leaves.

Often the simplest words!     only take you to the edge
of the sea        where to the artist    you are merely a tall dot
who has run out of land

                        or as Frank O'Hara once said to me
as we were strolling in      the tide
                                      "Baby, this is weather! ........