Figures On A Kangxi Vase

by Brett Rutherford 

The world might end
and they would not know it.
High on the slope
of a sacred mountain,
six mortal scholars gather
in a mansion garden.

Master Liu
has arranged everything
to mitigate
the heat of August.
A folding screen
conceals sun’s glare
and shades the table
where four enjoy
cold wine
from an antique flagon.

Hand turns around
blue-figured vase.
Gao, the exiled
high official, arrives
with a banned book
close to his heart.

His nephew, young
and handsome, feels
overdressed, and would
prefer a shady glen
to nap in, hatless
with collar undone.

A small boy, restless,
another bored
participant,
would rather be at
his bow and arrow,
or watching the play
of wild horses, but here
the slow pace of old men
calling to mind a poem,
leafing the pages to find
a Confucian dictum,
must suffice.
Honor it is
to be with the wise.

Hand turns around
blue-figured vase.
Crouching, a servant
adds coals to fire
beneath the brazier
meant to refresh
brown yi xing teapots.

Low walls zig-zag
the edge of Liu’s estate.
Trees overhang
the painted screen,
branches identical
to what the artist
painted there.
How daring to place
a painted forest
before a real one!

Hand turns around
blue-figured vase.
In mountain fog
the distant peaks,
even the edge
of a nearby precipice
are lost in white
as pale as porcelain.

All is foreground
and an extended hand
might touch cold glaze,
tracing the curve
of the limits of existence.

Frozen this once
and forever, the old men
debate the merits
of poetic styles,
deliberate
on whether things
are permanent
or fade to nothing.

Cool wine, warm tea,
the rise and fall
of a remembered song;
muffled, the dim roar
of falling waters;
calligraphy called up
from nothing to drop
upon a blank page.

Hand turns around
blue-figured vase.
A day too hot
for any other purpose.
The world might end
if eyes sought deep
into the denser mist,
a yellow glare,
gnat-flecked, in which
two butterflies hover,
weightless, immobile,
and terrified.

What is this blotch
upon pure whiteness?
The burning sun
craving to show itself?
A distant city
ablaze, invaded?
The exploding scream
of a split atom?

Gao, the book!
Be quick, my friend!
Find the right page,
the words to read,
the names of gods,
if gods there are,
we need invoke.

Here in the clarity
made plain by tea,
a thousand years
of wisdom adheres.
So long, the afternoons,
so short the nights
of bug-bite August.

Here they are safe,
scholars, nephew,
boy, and servant.
Hand turns around
blue-figured vase.
They need not fear
the world might end.

[A hand-painted blue-and-white vase depicts scholars in a garden. Behind four seated scholars, a painted, folding screen protects them from sun and wind. The trees painted on the screen are the same as those around them. All is foreground – no distant landscape is visible, as though the scene were surrounded by fog. Under the vase’s glaze, a large open area has a slight yellow cast, and the vase painter has drawn little dust-flecks around the edge of the mysterious glow, and placed two butterflies hovering there. What looks like a defect in the color of the clay seems purposeful, and we are asked to explain its cause, and why the scholars seem suspended in the foreground.]