Song of the Sevens
for two voices, Mid-Autumn festival
after 秦觀
They say the average star forms from an accretion of densities, performs
reactions whose excesses light millions of years of space. I ask at which
point star becomes space and space star if light is atmosphere
Clouds part with rain show at night above us celestial river. Think
from here the depth of night. Observe Zhinu’s bluewhite 25 light
years away, the skyharp weaves sad notes staves space
They say if big enough gravitational pull increases. New reactions
form new elements, new coat of iron core. All other matter destroyed. I
see compulsion, strain of movement, circling, accretion
It is not ordinary, this night. Magpies span water. Earth-bound,
girls invoke the seamstress, request virtue, speech, appearance,
gong. Thrown high white powder quickens the dark. Is gone
They say a star bigger than our own reaching its end becomes so dense matter
turns in on itself. I see dissolution, continuation in unconnected space. I ask
of star and space, space, star, and light as atmosphere
Keen through motley wings bluewhite light hardened tears
crack the sky’s glaze into Ru-work. Loom-lost Zhinu
does not hear earth, sees dark
They see a pin-prick possibility the core survives. Waves shock galaxies
excess turns antimatter, a gaping maw. I ask or choke this black hole: which
one the atmosphere and which star
Night dew jades bluewhite. Autumn-gold winds net meteors
starlit in waves, fade between constellations. Reflect below
the too-fast riverrun tumbledown magpies
They say the average star forms from an accretion of densities,
Performs reactions whose excesses light millions of years of space
It rains this autumn festival. River sobs wingflaps
of a single swan. Shine through the thousand magpies
two. Cowherd—weaver. Man—mistress of the gong
They say when big enough gravitational pull increases. New
elements coat the core. In orbit destruction matters, implodes
The stars are imperfect. We sink into river cannot
see sun. All gong fails in hands moving fast
apart where touch disintegrates matter
They say at no point does star become space, space star. At no point
is light atmosphere. I ask
No matter without bodies fate is still 朝
朝
暮
暮
About this poem
This poem was included in Best Scottish Poems 2020. Best Scottish Poems is an online publication, consisting of 20 poems chosen by a different editor each year, with comments by the editor and poets. It provides a personal overview of a year of Scottish poetry. The editor in 2020 was Janette Ayachi.
I read on a panel with Yeung during the online Edinburgh Book Festival this year and she pulled out a centuries-old scroll from under her chair mid-discussion! She was as passionate as she was graceful when selecting her words; this is a poet you can trust to harness stillness in a fluid world. She has a remarkable voice, wholly original, and never apologetic in semantics, yet also in the lilt and cadence of her accent of performance. Sometimes poems become more than poems when read aloud, they take flight or often float, or even allow the listener to do these things. This poem, a dialogue between two entities, is nebulous with sound as the cosmos is soaked with stars, each word carefully plucked from the bouquet of the poet’s fragrant mind; one always flowering, moving when the house sleeps, perfuming all the rooms. Yeung paints with words and it is paintings that emerge.
Author’s note:
I rarely hear my own poetry in one voice, which is part of what the poetry itself tries to explore. ‘Song of the Sevens’ is a poem for two voices from a sequence for multiple voices (Potsherds), which explores the oracular in the archaeological and cosmological imaginaries, and tries to test gaps and bridges in understanding and gaps and bridges between resonant objects. This poem occurs a mid-point between two different festivals from the seventh and eighth months of the Chinese lunisolar calendar, and is haunted by an infamous lyric by the Song dynasty poet Qin Guan about a legend of the Milky Way. It places the voices from this and other legends and woman-made objects in a counterpoint with a series of questions about the cosmos. The poem ends with the final words from Qin’s lyric, the first, a dawning, the second, a mirkening, which repeat or echo each other.
