Three Poems by Tim Hawkins

The Price of Cabbage

When I first lived in Taiwan, many years ago,
I wrote Chinese characters by candlelight
deep into the night, following the rules
of top before bottom, left before right,
in column after column of a child’s notebook,
each stroke coaxing to life a syllable of perfect pitch
floating, seemingly, above the fray
of mortal communication.

Later, as I tried to read myself to sleep,
my eyes fought a battle they could not win
with my native English, arrayed in
hideous formation, words and letters
marching in lockstep across the page
like columns of soldiers, or like ants
intent on deflowering the trees
of their plum blossoms
and devouring the very pages from the book.

Sometimes I would write in the morning
accompanied by tea and the
relentless chattering of the neighborhood wives
drifting in from the street.
At first I strained to grasp a word or two, and then
one day understood that the price of cabbage had risen.
And the day after that it had risen again.

Like anywhere, it took some time
to absorb the rules of ritual exchange,
then one brave soul began to greet me,
looking me directly in the eye
while asking if I had eaten, and
coming over to share pleasantries
under the guise of learning English.

She called me out of the blue
exactly three years ago this month,
at first sounding nervous
and excited, as if she had something
of great import to tell me,
and then crying softly before
she hung up, because I seemed
to have suffered brain damage
in the long years of my absence.                   

The two of us had once shared a
bounty, more than our tongues and lips
could hold, but after all those years

I was choking on mouthfuls of the stuff
that inhabits the gulf between feeling,
memory, and words;

I could barely remember how to ask for the price of cabbage.

And now I can’t even begin to make out
a letter I once wrote, and had hoped to send.

I wonder where all the words have gone,
whether they have been threatened
into exile by jealous husbands,
or killed by the rabble of barbarian English,
which no longer causes me pain.
Perhaps they are just off in a corner
hiding from the foreign devils in my mind.

As for the memories, to save face
they practice an old Chinese custom.
Before leaving home, they kiss something
that may turn out in the end to be nothing
more than a sliver of raw bacon
hanging from a hook by the door,
to sustain the illusion
with greasy smiles,
to both neighbor and kin
in these times of famine,
that these lips have supped on meat.

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