Mao: A Life in Six Parts

1

What do men
born to kill millions
look like at birth?

Do they cry their way
out the dank canal
or do they hatch
impervious to pain?

Do their mouths suck
with telling force
and a hunger
no milk can sate?

When they crawl,
do their mother’s weep?

When they walk,
is there something
awful in the gait?

2

At twenty-four,
sharp-tongued and lean,
he set out on foot
seeking China,

his pockets bare,
feeding off monks
in time-sealed robes

and feudal temples,
floating the short
draft of gratitude.

A seer studied his palm:
“You could kill ten thousand
without blinking an eye.”

Unblinking, he smiled,
knowing how low
she’d set the bar.

3

Hard rules he learned
at Futian:

a live enemy
is worth more than
a dead enemy.

for a while.

truths that hide
can be pried
from beneath

a man’s fingernails.

the way to right
knows no limits,
is a path paved

with stones of wrong.

cruelty in the right hands
is a kind clasp.

4

Greek-like,
she learned the folly
of wedding a god—

sharing the march,
bearing his children,
freeing his bowels
with her bare fingers,

out-breathing him,
broken, alone.

Once, he sat
in her mad room
and spoke of the past,

this flesh made myth
who sired a nation
and left his own child
by the side of the road.

5

A most guileful
gardener was he,
who grew flowers
to sever the buds.

Come out, come out,
reticent rose;
come out, come out,
you wary mumes,

let one hundred
flowers blossom
in the garden
of discontent

so that color can be
purged from the earth
and the lotuses
drowned in their blooms.

6

Do embalmed men
muse as they float
between death and life?

Do they note words
spoken by callers
to their crypts

or see in faces
the misshapen ghosts
of themselves?

Do lips ever quiver
to smile or speak
or bones long to sleep?

How do they feel,
deprived of a heart,
awaiting the keeper
to cut off the light?