Fall 2023

Architectures of Emptiness

Arthur Sze

1.

Yogis call these buoyed minutes
the moment of the universe, and who knows
if spruce, aspen, and a golden rain tree
converse, like mycelium, through roots?
As pink limns the black ridgeline, you hear
a ruby-crowned kinglet but can’t see
if it is nestled in a fir or alligator juniper;
will another summer of crackling fires stench the air?
Will tent caterpillars infest the cottonwood?
Will an orange sunrise sting your eyes,
as helicopters dump liquid fertilizer
onto thousands of acres of burning conifers?
An architect dynamites rock to create
a skylight for a cliffside dwelling that,
below ground, has three rock walls
and one glassed-in side—though we come
and go like streamers of yellowing forsythia—
that looks toward sunrise over a white-capping sea.

 

2.

Clearing twigs and branches, shoveling silt,

     —one monk scrapes
       a knuckle through sand, 

we chop willow shoots rising out of the acequia;

     makes a gray X;
     then another, 

on a post, a spotted towhee rotates its head,

     holding a paintbrush,
     sweeps the colored sands 

sideways, up, down, before flying off;

     from perimeter to center;
     another collects them

I pause at these minute shifts—

     in an urn;
     then they disperse the sands

in the predawn dark, I am infinitesimal

     on flowing water, laying out,
     in minute detail

gazing up at Deneb but brighten as the sky

     the palace and ephemerality
     of all endeavors:

brightens and see our lives unfurl:

     what is stilled, flows,
     what is destroyed, liberates— 

 

3.
For each holder of water rights,
days and times start
at the lowest elevation
then move upstream
toward the reservoir.
On the first day, water
soaks the length
of the ditch and clears silt;
soon sedge, wax currant,
thinleaf alder sprout.
We divert water into downhill
pipes that run to driplines
and rotating sprinklers:
sprigs of apricots flower;
catkins burst; I pace
our length, clear debris,
scan for Cyanic milkvetch,
Tufted sand verbena,
Springer’s blazing star.
We have that western
wheatgrass, this wire rush,
and scratch—match
to flame—a path of
devotion into empty space.

4.

Mark the shadows of aspen leaves
     rippling on grass; beneath a veil
of white bark, aspens have a photosynthetic
    layer that absorbs sunlight

through winter; a magpie sails
    across a yard, flutters wing feathers,
and, landing on spruce, squawks—
    it speaks to you; thinleaf alder

shoots rising out of the ditch speak;
    you stand in a tree pose: inhale,
exhale, inhaleexhale: water
is to emptiness as sun is to language;

you sluice into the infinite tangle
    of beginnings and ends: cottonwood
seeds swirl in the air; a wild
    apricot blooms by the ditch; suddenly

each aspen leaf on a tree is a word,
    the movement of leaves their syntax:
burns      diamond light      diffuse      it
    so      we      green      green, 

diamond       light      burns      so    we
diffuse     it      into      greening— 

suddenly you parse the leaves,
    and they are speaking to you now:

Arthur Sze recieved the 2021 Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. His newest book is The Glass Constellation: New and Collected Poems (Copper Canyon).

(view contributions by Arthur Sze)