Cyril Wong
Two Poems
Clouds
Those clouds are not Baudelaire’s clouds.
They believe in long-distance relationships.
Clouds give back the images by which we know ourselves.
All clouds preserve a hierarchy; the colder it gets the higher you climb.
Some huddle around the moon for comfort.
Taking sides, forming factions, only to split away again.
Sniggering when we look up, making faces.
And liken the city’s lights to stars, yet having no desire to count them.
They love to take pictures during a storm, but never of the same place twice.
Pulling away from the sky, the sky bears down.
Clouds negotiate with eternity; eternity would have nothing to do with us.
The clouds are just clouds—make no mistake about it.
Air
Leaning against
air, uncertain
what air is. What accounts
for movement, the air’s
volubility? What is responsible
for beauty? Happiness
finds its edges
along the memory
of a wound.
Far easier to locate
the wound, these breaks
in the flow. The body
knows, inhaling
its secrets.
The body knows
nothing. Air is
everything we do.