Yet
for Annamaria
I wake beside a hunk of concrete
angled up to a frenzied freeway
where platoons of scooters, trucks
and cars roar insatiably all night long
but they particularly steal my ears
this morning of Christmas Eve.
In Gaoxiong’s soupy skies
at night the moon is only visible
occasionally, but I know it’s there;
moonbeams, moonshine, claire de lune:
all its meanings sound corny
and are given by us, but then
can be reflected back, just as
science says its light is reflection,
mere reflection. In America
a man rants in a department store
“Stop lying to your kids!”
“There is no Santa Claus!”
yet the kids queuing for Santa
ignore his voice. He can’t tell
how lies differ from fantasy
or the magic in their world
that his flattening realism
will never dispel, the wonder
of dream. In a season of good cheer
a killer hurtles a truck
into a Berlin Christmas markt,
Melbourne men plan murder
in the venerable name of God. Yet
in Gaoxiong’s deeply Chinese streets
carols play, electric trees
twinkle: Christmas is spreading.
This Christmas, half a world
away from you, I will look up
and, cloudlessness or clouds,
will see the moon is there
and by some process I don’t pretend
to understand, or will ever,
I feel, though too far off
you are yet almost beside me
and that corny, reflecting moon
will spread its determined light
on us both.
