Cliff Bernier
SILK ROAD SUITE
(The Market Song)
Spirit-wind spiraling through passages,
caravans cutting trails through desert sands,
camels moving merchants on the trade roads,
whisper tones unraveling like silk
Chang’an to the Imperial Court in Rome,
spirit-voices singing in the reeds,
artisans, caliphates and warriors
flutter-tonguing swallow-songs for silk
Zhang Qian prisoner of Xiognu. Emissary of Emperor Wudi to the West.
Gaming bandits in the Gansu, antelopes, gazelles,
tribes abandoned by heaven, demons mounted on pigs,
tracking the moving sands to the Jade Gate Pass through the Land of Death,
Hami, the oases of Turfan and Kuqa,
on roped camels racked with musk, rubies, gunpowder, pearls,
apothecary, millet, persimmons, plums⎯
in caravans twisting like dragons, with no landmarks but bones,
from the fields of summer wheat, with porcelain and cinnamon
to purchase the sacred horses poured from water,
Yuezhi trading flying horses for silk
Offer to the Goddess of Silkworms,
Fuxi and Nugua entwined,
mirror slips and satin robes
from the land of fish and rice
Soften the gum in the binding thread,
spin filaments like glistening trails
to the choraling wind in the mulberry leaves,
the Silk Road in the cocoon
Caravanserai in Kashgar. Crossroads to the West.
Fierce and impetuous, false and deceitful,
coarse merchants bargained in the Great Bazaar
to barter cotton, knives, wood carvings, cut glass
from donkey carts, in street stalls,
under wooden balconies, behind wooden shutters,
by narrow doorways, at the base of the roof of the world,
with courtesans and warriors weary from walking,
with cameleers fitting horses and yaks for saddles and harnesses,
measuring mutton, rhubarb, yellow carrots, died eggs,
anise, apricots, pots, pans,
piles of bread from bakers bent over brick ovens,
skull-capped elders in noodle shops,
silversmiths, bootmakers, menders, thieves
haggled at tea for carpets and sheep skins,
magicians and soothsayers embroidered like silk
Percussive wind, propelled from Kucha,
guide the trader on his journey to the plains
by flowing water, fragrant woods,
compel him like the siren in the flute
On waves of sand, through mountain passes
sustain him like the notes of minstrel songs
from bitter sandstorms, blinding cold,
in voices like the winding of the flute
In the Great Domed Market of Samarkand, crossroads to the East,
merchants, acrobats, mathematicians, monks
exchanged cultures like coins, beads from Syria,
coral from Lebanon, saffron, narcissus, sesame, ginger,
fat-tailed sheep, spangles set with emeralds,
sugar bread, almonds, pepper, cedar,
under flowered mosques of turquoise tiles,
on prayer rugs, from minarets, to camel bells,
with jugglers, palmists, pulse-readers, surgeons,
long-eared barbers, dancing boys from Merv,
ostriches in the Plane Tree Garden, peacocks in the Garden of Heart’s Delight,
in mosaics of astronomers mapping the stars,
auctioning almanacs and amber, jasper, jet,
pomegranates, paper for the price of silk
Suspended between darkness and light,
aspara, mendicant on the path,
compose your mystic strand
in harmonics like the ashiq
From the wine-colored mountains of Persia
find scrolls in the grottos of faith,
in the pure sword of the spirit,
the trail of the eight-fold way
For love of the one-eyed people,
for love of the oracle-bone,
for love of the nomadic kingdom,
for love of the terrible wind,
for love of the wild grass,
for love of the desert song,
for love of the city of shadows,
for love of the solace of silk
Riches for the Silk People from the East.
For ladies to bear the fabric of light
tender the earth-bound lambs of Rome,
silver, pearls, diamonds, salt,
lapis lazuli, ivory, lacquer, wool,
on travels to the date groves of the Khan,
to Baku, Bokhara, Tashkent, Kashgar,
Samarkand, Chang’an, the Pure Land,
by hawk and by falcon, by fluted reed,
for lust of knowing what should not be known,
for the hundred thousand fools of God,
for the transcendent touch of silk.
Spirit-wind spiraling through passages,
caravans cutting trails through desert sands,
camels moving merchants on the trade roads,
whisper tones unraveling like silk
Chang’an to the Imperial Court in Rome,
spirit-voices singing in the reeds,
artisans, caliphates and warriors
flutter-tonguing swallow-songs for silk
Cliff Bernier
Cliff Bernier has appeared in the Potomac Review, the Baltimore Review, the Alexandria and Mt. Vernon Gazettes, notjustair.com, and elsewhere, and is featured on a CD of poetry duets with Buffalo poet Verneice Turner as well as on two Jazzpoetry CDs, Live at IOTA Club and Cafe and Live at Bistro Europa. Cliff has been featured in readings and jazz poetry performances in Buffalo, Philadelphia, and around the DC area and currently hosts the poetry series Poesis in Arlington, Va. He lives in Alexandria, Va. with his wife and three sons.
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