Poetry from writer William Ellis of Chengdu, Sichuan, China.
For What is Left Us
– on When We Two Parted
I still have the fever you gave me: “I tried to be alone” you said, “so I could think of you with nothing to disturb me. I sat in my son’s bedroom, in his little chair, in the dark. The other rooms belonged to my husband. When my son had gone to sleep I closed my eyes: I saw you again and again.”
I see you now, asleep at your son’s side. In the end your fever was too much: my face grew brighter inside you, then vanished – and the fever passed to me. Sleepless, I sit in my study, afraid that I shall always see you, afraid that I shall never see you. I turn on the radio and hear a refrain; a woman sings: “Dors, pour l’amour qu’il nous reste.” “Sleep, for the love that is left us.”
I must be truly stricken to keep rehearsing these words and their simple music. The rest of the song tells this story: a woman in bed bends over a sleeping man: after long years it is only in sleep, or in watching the other sleep, that they love. Still I envy them for the time and the nights they have had: I never bent over your sleeping face – your face that keeps coming back.
If I could sleep, I could be free of this fever. If you are asleep, perhaps something of me left in you will survive. If I could sleep, I could still hold you in sleep. I find myself repeating, again and again, for myself, still awake, and for you, at last able to sleep, “Sleep, for the love that is left us”.
WE
The Bedroom Mirror
– on mirrors
Its glass and metal, flecked and tarnished, hold
my privileged memories; its cloudy surface
veils whatever was uncouth and raw.
Tonight, inside its depths, I see white faces
soften as they rise in passion; spasms
melt into a graceful dance; arms flung
at random reappear in sacred gestures –
of those who lived by love, who lived with me,
who still must live somewhere, somehow, but not
as they once were, not as they still remain
here in this mirror, here in my brightening gaze.
WE
Author Biography
William Ellis received his Ph.D in Literature from Boston College, then taught humanities at Vanier College in Montreal. He is currently the Senior Foreign Expert of the English department at Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan. There, he offers courses in Western Intellectual History, Art History, European Literature, and Canadian Studies. He was awarded the Sichuan Province Teaching Excellence Award in 2008. He is the author of The Theory of the American Romance, an Ideology in American Intellectual History, nominated in 1989 for the John Hope Franklin Publication Prize. His poetry has been published in Mala, Chengdu Grooves, and now, Unshod Quills.
O,Such moving poems…Congratulations William Ellis!
Thank you francesca;
I very much appreciate your comment.
William Ellis
Very well written.
Very haunting and beautiful. I could read these ten times over and still find something more.
Andrew