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    Friend

    The moon follows the earth’s orbit for millions of millennia
    Unlike the sun that whitens the sky, he is silent
    A curtain of space unchangeably dark behind him.
    His flight is alone despite the stars decorating his path.
    When you write his name like a ladder,
    A small hook at the end of one leg,
    Does it anchor him to earth or sky?
    A charged brush skims over surfaces: paper wraps rock.
    Two ladders side-by-side writes friendship in black ink.



    Want

    To want is like wood
    The eye and the heart below
    Between here and the horizon
    Stands a forest, statuesque, green
    The eye captures the forest
    It lies on the wet surface
    In flawless detail. Each branch
    A thought a breath a black line
    Burnt against the sky
    Outlines memory as simply
    As motion stilled. Few
    Pathways trek through the heart
    The sky like grass only blue



    Sky

    From the outreaching fingertips
    Of your right hand
    Unfurls the east and from
    The fingertips of the left the west
    Between them a tender chain
    Of rock woods rivers of red and blue
    Green earth divides your legs
    A compass that measures and strides,
    Landscapes of clouds rest
    On your brow and whatever walls
    Were built are reduced
    To that single horizontal line
    Your arms reconstruct in bones and flesh

     

    These poems are reimaginings or translations, perhaps, of three Chinese characters for the words friend (朋 peng2), want (想 xiang3), and sky (天 tian1).

     

    Jaime Robles is a writer and visual artist. She has two collections published by Shearsman Books (U.K.), Anime Animus Anima (2010) and Hoard (2013). She has produced many artist books, including Loup d’Oulipo, Letters from Overseas, and Aube/Afternoon. Her book-works are housed at the University of California, Berkeley, Yale University, and the Oulipo Archive in Paris, among others.

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