Water Calligraphy

Arthur Sze

In Celebration of His Being Named Poet Laureate

Huge congratulations to longtime friend and Conjunctions contributor Arthur Sze on being named the nation’s 25th Poet Laureate by the Library of Congress. In such a divisive, crossfire-hurricane moment in our country’s history, it’d be hard to imagine a more profoundly decent person and great writer to take on this role. Conjunctions has published his work repeatedly over the last 30 years, beginning with his poem “The String Diamond,” in Conjunctions:26, Sticks & Stones in Spring 1996. Fully a dozen other contributions to our pages followed that debut, including the title poems to Earthshine (in Conjunctions:33, 1999) and Quipu (in Conjunctions:35, 2000), as well as such key works as “The Double Helix,” “Available Light,” and “Water Calligraphy” (in issues 44, 54, and 62).

Arthur himself chose this latter poem for us to republish here, in its final form as it appeared in his 2019 National Book Award-winning Sight Lines, to celebrate the occasion of his becoming Poet Laureate. In our current issue, Conjunctions:84, We Love All We Voices, we lead off with his unforgettable “Lines of Sight, and Beyond: A Lecture at the Library of Congress,” upon his receipt of the first Rebecca Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry in 2024.

You can order print copies of all these issues on our website. What better way to find out why Arthur Sze himself has “always admired how Conjunctions gives authors space to develop longer, riskier pieces of writing.”

—Bradford Morrow
28 September 2025

1

A green turtle in broth is brought to the table—
I stare at an irregular formation of rocks

above a pond and spot, on the water’s
surface, a moon. As I move back and forth,

the moon slides from partial to full
to partial and then into emptiness; but no

moon’s in the sky, just slanting sunlight,
leafing willows along Slender West Lake,

parked cars outside an apartment complex,
where, against a background of chirping birds

and car horns, two women bicker. Now
it’s midnight at noon; I hear an electric saw

and the occasional sound of lumber striking
pavement. At the bottom of a teacup,

leaves form the character individual
and, after a sip, the number eight.

Snipped into pieces, a green turtle is returned
to the table; while everyone eats,

strands of thrown silk tighten, tighten
in my gut. I blink, and a woodblock carver

peels off pear shavings, stroke by stroke,
and foregrounds characters against empty space.

2

Begging in a subway, a blind teen and his mother stagger through the swaying car—

a woman lights a bundle of incense and bows at a cauldron—

people raise their palms around a nine-dragon juniper—

who knows the mind of a watermelon vendor picking his teeth?—

you stare up through layers of walnut leaves in a courtyard—

biting into marinated lotus stems—

in a drum tower, hours were measured
as water rising then spilling from one kettle into another—

pomegranate trees flowering along a highway—

climbing to the top of a pagoda, you look down at rebuilt city walls—

a peacock cries—

always the clatter of mah-jongg tiles behind a door—

at a tower loom, a man and woman weave brocade silk—

squashing a cigarette above a urinal, a bus driver hurries back—

a musician strikes sticks, faster and faster—

cars honk along a street approaching a traffic circle—

when he lowers his fan, the actor’s face has changed from black to white—

a child squats and shits in a palace courtyard—

yellow construction cranes pivot over the tops of high-rise apartments—

a woman throws a shuttle with green silk through the shed—

where are we headed, you wonder, as you pick a lychee and start to peel it—

3

Lightning ignites a fire in the wilderness: in hours,
200 then 2,000 acres are aflame; when a hotshot
crew hikes in to clear lines, a windstorm
kicks up and veers the blaze back, traps them,
and their fire shelters become their body bags.
Piñons in the hills have red and yellow needles—
in a bamboo park, a woman dribbles liquefied sugar
onto a plate, and it cools, on a stick, in the form
of a butterfly; a man in red pants stills
then moves through the Crane position.
A droplet hangs at the tip of a fern—water
spills into another kettle; you can only guess
at how flames engulfed them at 50 miles per hour.
In the West, wildfires scar each summer—
water beads on beer cans at a lunch counter—
you do not want to see exploding propane tanks;
you try to root in the world, but events sizzle
along razor wire, along a snapping end of a power line.

4

Two fawns graze on leaves in a yard—
as we go up the Pearl Tower, I gaze
through smog at freighters along the river.
A thunderstorm gathers: it rains and hails
on two hikers in the Barrancas; the arroyo
becomes a torrent, and they crouch for an hour.
After a pelting storm, you spark into flame
and draw the wax of the world into light—
ostrich and emu eggs in a basket by the door,
the aroma of cumin and pepper in the air.
In my mouth, a blister forms then disappears.
At a teak table, with family and friends,
we eat Dungeness crab; but, as I break
apart shell and claws, I hear a wounded elk
shot in the bosque. Canoers ask and receive
permission to land; they beach a canoe
with a yellow cedar wreath on the bow
then catch a bus to the fairgrounds powwow.

5

—Sunrise: I fill my rubber bucket with water
and come to this patch of blue-gray sidewalk—
I’ve made a sponge-tipped brush at the end
of a waist-high plastic stick; and, as I dip it,
I know water is my ink, memory my blood—

the tips of purple bamboo arch over the park—
I see a pitched battle at the entrance to a palace
and rooftops issuing smoke and flames—
today, there’s a white statue of a human figure,
buses and cars drive across the blank square—

at that time, I researched carp in captivity
and how they might reproduce and feed
people in communes— I might have made
a breakthrough, but Red Guards knocked at the door—
they beat me, woke me up at all hours

until I didn’t know if it was midnight or noon—
I saw slaughtered pigs piled up on wooden racks,
snow in the spring sunshine—the confessions
they handed me I signed—I just wanted it all
to end—and herded pigs on a farm—wait—

I hear a masseur striking someone’s back,
his hands clatter like wooden blocks—
now I block the past by writing the present—
as I write the strokes of moon, I let the brush
swerve rest for a moment before I lift it

and make the one stroke hook—ah, it’s all
in that hook—there, I levitate: no mistakes
will last, even regret is lovely—my hand
trembles; but if I find the gaps resting places,
I cut the sinews of an ox, even as the sun

moon waxes—the bones drop, my brush is sharp,
sharper than ever—and though people murmur
at the evaporating characters, I smile, frown,
fidget, let go—I draw the white, not the black—

6

Tea leaves in the cup spell above then below—
outside the kitchen window, a spray

of wisteria blossoms in May sunshine.
What unfolds inside us? We sit at a tabletop

that was once a wheel in Thailand: an iron hoop
runs along the rim. On a fireplace mantel,

a flame flickers at the bottom of a metal cup.
As spokes to a hub, a chef cleans blowfish;

turtles beach on white sand; a monk rakes
gravel into scalloped waves in a garden;

moans issue from an alley where men stir
from last night’s binge. If all time converges

as light from stars, all situations reside here.
In red-edged heat, I irrigate the peach trees;

you bake a zucchini frittata. Water buffalo
browse in a field. Hail has shredded lettuces,

and, as a farmer paces and surveys damage,
a coyote slips across a road, under barbed wire.

7

The letter A was once an inverted cow’s head,
but now, as I write, it resembles feet
planted on the earth rising to a point.

Once is glimpsing the Perseid meteor shower—
and, as emotion curves space, I find
a constellation that arcs beyond the visible.

A neighbor brings cucumbers and basil;
when you open the bag and inhale, the world
inside is fire in a night courtyard

at summer solstice; we have limned the time here
and will miss the bamboo arcing along
the fence behind our bedroom, peonies

leaning to earth. A mayordomo retrenches
the opening to the ditch; water runs near
the top of the juniper poles that line our length—

in the bosque, the elk carcass decomposes
into a stench of antlers and bones. Soon
ducks will nest on the pond island, and as

a retired violinist who fed skunks left a legacy—
the one she least expected—we fold this
in our pocket and carry it wherever we go.