Fairy Tale
Shing Yi Ng
I will start where it all begins,
With a breaking sun and trace of day,
A searchlight in a wintry kingdom.
White cold draws near; the bark of trees
Turns black with last night’s sleet.
It cannot fall from foreign skies,
It loses its wings, its dove’s head,
To the dance and foil of irony.
It is dazed as a bluff of snow,
An emptied blue-aired clarity.
It speaks in a wordless aria,
Or keeps its peace in fiction’s cot.
It defends itself with hapless tears,
As weak and true as a brutal fall.
It is dead as reddening leaves.
It watches at the frontier of chance
The hope it had castled, a child of nowhere,
No immortal home to rest its head.
It watches your different skies,
The dark of a star, the sleep of a tale. |
