Skip to content

Scottish Poetry Library

Register/Sign in
Shopping Bag Shopping Bag
Bringing people and poems together
  • Home
  • Poetry
    • Poets
    • Poems
    • Makar – National Poet
      • Our Waking Breath: A Poem-letter from Scotland to Ukraine
      • A Woman’s A Woman
      • The story of the Makar – National Poet of Scotland
    • Best Scottish Poems
    • Spiorad an Àite
      Spirit of Place
    • The Trysting Thorns
    • Poetry Ambassadors
      Tosgairean na Bàrdachd
      • Poetry Commissions: Walter Scott 250
        Coimiseanan Bàrdachd: Walter Scott 250
      • Poetry Ambassadors 2021
    • Posters
    • Podcasts
  • Library
    • Become a borrower
    • Catalogue
    • Collections
    • Ask a librarian
    • Copyright enquiries
  • Learning
    • SQA set texts
    • Learning resources
    • Designing sensory poetry activities
    • Children’s poems in Scots
    • National Poetry Day archive
    • New to poetry?
    • Advice for poets
  • Events
    • What’s On
    • Meeting rooms and venue hire
    • Exhibitions
  • Shop
    • Poetry Highlights
    • Entropie Books
    • Stichill Marigold Press
    • Poems for Doctors, Nurses & Teachers
    • Scottish Poetry
    • Poetry Pamphlet Cards
    • Help
  • About us
    • Our story
    • Our people
    • Company Papers & Policies
    • Our projects
    • Our building
    • FAQs
    • Find us
  • Support us
    • Become a Friend
    • Donate
  • Blog
Shopping BagShopping Bag
Ask a librarian
  • Home
  • >
  • Poetry
  • >
  • Heather H. Yeung
  • >
  • Song of the Sevens
Donate Donate icon Ask a Librarian Ask a Librarian icon

Song of the Sevens

Heather H. Yeung

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


Heather H. Yeung

Tags:

Best Scottish Poems 2020 stars

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.

Listen

scottishpoetrylibrary · 'Song of the Sevens' by Heather Yeung

Voices: Johanna Linsley (www.jhlinsley.com), Heather H. Yeung

Sound: Jan Mertens

Share this
Facebook
Twitter
Email

Learn more

Best Scottish Poems 2020: English

edited by Janette Ayachi
Find out more

Heather H. Yeungb. 1984

Heather H. Yeung (楊希蒂) is a poet, visual artist, book maker and performer. Most of her work includes poetic text in some form, but this characteristically migrates between media and practices, from hand-made artist books to installations, prints and...
More about Heather H. Yeung

Newsletter

Sign up for our regular email newsletter.
Subscribe now
  • Newsletter signup
  • Accessibility
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Privacy Policy
Scottish Poetry Library
5 Crichton's Close, Canongate
Edinburgh EH8 8DT
Tel: +44 (0)131 557 2876
© Scottish Poetry Library 2022.
The Scottish Poetry Library is a registered charity (No. SCO23311).
City of Edinburgh logo Green Arts Initiative logo Creative Scotland logo
Scottish Poetry Library