Rules of Empire, by Daniel Lusk

Child of the Sepik, photography for National Geographic, by Malcolm Kirk (USA) September 1973. Photograph copyright of Malcolm Kirk, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Rules of Empire
 
A blind white dog stands shag deep in snow.
This back yard could be Bhutan, a woman 
in plaid pajamas nearby milking a yak, 
staring into the distance past a patch of grass 
that might be Burma, where the horizon 
is jagged with mountain tops of an island 
country rife with birdsongs and trouble. 
 
How far beyond to Java, where sleepers
of Bogar may be awakened by thunder
almost any night of the year.
 
There is jackfruit in Ceylon and mangoes.
A soldier rides a purring motorcycle in pure dark
toward a churchyard where a halo of light
encircles a tiny granite stone.  A native girl 
steps from the sidecar, mist on her face
and bare shoulders like a frisson of expectation.
 
These images, bitter and sweet, tug at the hem 
of the reader’s thoughts as he stands at the window, 
facing the Bhutan of his morning. Thinking 
yet of Ceylon where a priest and an astrologer 
scratch their heads over a conundrum. 
 
Not the same to them both ,he thinks, 
for the sin troubling the penitent seems wondrous 
as yak milk to the lover, relishing what might ensue.
This disparity is surely a sort of miracle,
as only one of them is afraid of shadows.
 
Come morning, babies will hang in sacks of muslin 
from the branches of trees, milk on their lips, asleep
while their mothers pick tea nearby.
 
The white dog will whine at the cold of Bhutan
and the woman in pajamas will pick him up
to go back inside their hut beyond the snow
 
and leave the reader with the matter of Ceylon
and its wonders, where the Governor has just left 
his mistress, a dancing girl of a caste whose women 
must go bare-breasted by rule of the Empire. 
 
Daniel Lusk

Daniel Lusk is author of eight poetry collections and other books. His work is published widely in literary journals, and his genre-bending essay “Bomb” (New Letters), was awarded a 2016 Pushcart Prize. Native of the prairie Midwest and former commentator on small press books for NPR, he lives in Vermont with his wife, Irish poet Angela Patten.