William Bibby

  AT BEIJING EASTVILLAGE ARTISTS

   COLONY, SUNDAY

  

  

  Discriminationsemerge with the Polis

  but, cease with Art where nothing is separated.

  In the silence an invisible cock crows,

  or just above, in a stunted willow, agitatedsparrows

  worry at its yellow bark, shining as a pillar ofgold

  might hold up an emperor’s palace.

  

  As evening descends simple dwellings along the road

  fall in shadow; laughter, voices rising, kitchen air

  full of scent, a dog barks, a door slams shut in agust,

  the tin roofs are covered in fallen leaves andrust

  leaks through when it rains; interiors arehidden

  genders are swapped and swapped again.

  

  Love’s weight then, suspended

  from the soaring transoms of the mind

  exact, entire to Love’s weight now

  and yet diminished somehow,

  by a camera nodding slowly on its pivot

  peering down from iron beams high above.

  

  Artists exchange their studios in the colony

  to unsettle the tiny men with their armbands

  and small pistols by disappearing to then appear

  once more naked from the toilet in the square

  slicked with honey and the drunken flies

  of officialdom engineering punishment.

  

  This is the manifestation of defiance.

  The artist holds a finger to the state

  the state manages the chaos it has left

  imprisoning minds with the threat of death;

  even after the bulldozers retreat

  there will be fires on unreachable mountain peaks.