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How Will You Color Your Shadow?

I.
Yellow yellow yellow,
the river winds, the wind comes
in silk and apricots.
There are no victims.
Yellow yellow, the river twists
in slow quotations,
feeding source to silence.
There are no victims.
We are all the victims,
the culprits, the clergy, the clerks,
the willow trees weeping
young on the hot water, yellow.
How many rupees?
How many rupees for this damask cloth?
See here, these folds they are fine-spun.
The weft was woven in Beijing,
in Moscow and Los Alamos.
How much will you take for these lengths
the color of spring rain on the iris,
the color of laughter,
the color of my lover's arms
in the morning?
No silver will answer this damask.
The patterns have traveled far
from the heart of Katmandu.
The ambient clouds of Kilamanjaro
nestle to unfold at your feet
in warm roses, colors clouding your head
with shrouds of ashes you haven't felt
before they dust your eyes,
your hair, your daughters,
your palms and fingers,
the crumpled digits of unforgotten figures
silhouetted.
We are all our victims choosing.
We are all the people living
living silhouetted
     stark against a mushroom moon.

II.
Ghosts, can you come back like kisses?
Ghosts, can you come back like brushes
of night in angry dreams,
like the gooseflesh of a chilly corner
in a swift mistake of remembering?
Do you stammer in shadows of orange
and fire, do you wander from blister
to burn and turn on the end of a scream
still stuck somewhere half-way inside
your throat?
     Who do you wish to visit, who
do you tremble to touch in the darkness,
if you could shake them, wake them like a slap
across the face, if you still had a face
to sting when the tears stopped streaking
in rivers of yellow and ruby, a death flashed
too fast on a solid wall of bricks?
You are held to this world where you cannot hold
the morning rice, jasmine tea and cream-white cats,
the tiny laughs of ten thousand leaves
on the willow trees. Do you keep a tongue
you can whisper into these jingo ears?
Will they ever give you a chance to sleep?
Ghosts, can you come back like plums
on the August breezes, can you come
back like kisses in summer? Children,
what will you say?

III.
Snow sweeps lightly, fleeces
the trees to soft flocks
of branches hiding under feathers,
under ashes of moonlight
settling softly, throwing the night
back in a boomerang.
A north wind comes keen through the spare
fold of birches. Sleep is here
somewhere sighing deep beneath
this snow that crescendos
white from the endless sky,
comes to cover for a moment
until every breath has had a rest
and can begin again.