Peter O’Donovan

Imprint

     ~after the Xianren Cave pottery fragments

Such is the mud, the Yangtze clay held up,
lifted from the firing pit, a charred pot
inspected for cracks and leaks, then cleaned
and used for a flicker, before the break
that folds it back underground, into the cool
sheltering earth beside the bones of turtles
and birds, flaked stone burins and scrapers,
the points of fishing spears, needles, shells,

together in a tunnel passing under
forests burned down to swidden, to fields
flooded for domesticating rice strains,
ploughed by swamp buffalo still half savage
and roiling in their yokes, or dragging timber
to frame rammed earth walls that oversee
the construction of trade-ships, fleets spreading
down rivers remade, moulded to grand canals
for hauling grain to the constellations
of city-stars exploding boldly through
this passage of twenty thousand years, until

an excavation shovel rustles the earth,
and slowly, a gentle brush uncovers
potsherds, reddish-brown fragments held up,
lifted from the dig, inspected, then cleaned,
revealing striations still visible,
a pattern woven within the surface,
a decoration of careful cord-marks
suggesting a basket, some sense of holding
or holding on, something like permanence.