The Yellow Emperor & 2 More

by Jack D. Harvey (May 2025)

The Yellow Emperor
–
When the last lithe leopard
in the emperor’s crowded preserve
leapt down from his arboreal perch
pink-mouthed and mottled,
where was the degenerated emperor,
taped and bandaged,
with all his skill for naught and
disowned by his own people,
slowly, grandly, greedily dying?
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Nowhere else but
still as stone
in the hospital,
such as it was,
his golden skin wan
in the crepuscular hospital light.
Was it his own disease,
newly invented,
or whose disease was it?
–
Lengthy discourse
rattling out of the
discountenanced doctor,
made clear the cancer or
so he called it,
was the last stop on the line.
–
Brutish cells, voyaging
in giant argosies of destruction
turn yellow to sallow
and, dappled with deceit,
dangerous sympathetic
friends and courtiers
dimly seen, daily on view
became more distinct,
more sovereign,
as death clumped closer
and the flesh, forever awake,
became a burden.
–
Death as a unicorn
in nurse’s uniform
bides his time,
patient as Griselda
among bottles and needles.
=
Toward the last morning,
fading with the stars
the Yellow Emperor saw clear
as alpine forests, close as lovers
the luminous jade-green eyes
of a dragon, watchful and quiet,
watched it fade
to its beautiful oblivion of myth
and the emperor arose,
a live wire of life and strength,
leaving cap and clothes,
leaping through the dawn
he went, bright as the Paschal lamb
he went, bright as the morning he went,
dancing to the harmony and peace
of nothing at all,
to eternal heavenly equivalence;
kingpin of the indeterminate,
internal joyful void
where all power and life begin.
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What History Teaches
=
Follow a variety of interests;
take pleasure
in what history presents.
Actual government?
No, but Rome in a ring
with the other beasts.
–
Xerxes returning
commends our own times,
commends the fierce grace
of automobiles.
=
Time and chance afford
us only one opportunity.
Although the ages
do not alter us,
this is not the fault
of old men.
=
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Venus Disarmed
=
Astute statue,
best in art,
best in light,
best mellow.
Not hurt by haste,
cut round and
round, rude stone
takes form.
–
Take a hand
and feel
the fingers.
the arms;
see eye to eye
with such beauty
as never was
what the world knew;
blink at perfection,
like an owl at sunlight.
–
Serene is marble,
the Goddess serene;
–
how hard,
how just.
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