Professor Xu / Madame Bovary / Sparrow War
Without his wife,
who drowned her name
in No Name Lake,
1968,Professor Xu
is still himself.Just now
in a small courtyard
--his memory garden,
he calls it--
among sunflowers
taller than he is,
the only
private property
history has left him,Professor Xu is doing
what he has always done
there. He isremembering...
his student days
in France
before the Great War.
(There have been
so many lesser wars
since.) How
he learned the language
reading Flaubert.Language...
a cracked kettle
on which we beat out
tunes for bears
to dance to,
while all the time
we long to move
the stars to pity.As Professor Xu
remembers it,
Chairman Mao declared
one of those lesser wars
on China's sparrows,
1956...Listening
with his inner ears,
he hears his countrymen
making political noises
on cracked kettles
too, until
the sparrows, guilty
of eating China's grain,
fall to earth, exhausted.Home. Where is home?
Professor Xu, longing
in his 'memory garden,'
is home.
An innocent sky
full of sparrows
by day
and stars by night...
unmoved by language,
without pity. Is home.Professor Xu, loving
Emma Bovary like a wife.