Two Poems | Maggie Wang

An Introduction to History

after an excerpt from Ibn Khaldun,​​ The​​ Muqaddimah

It should be known that endings are for the sake of standing at the prow of a lost ship with ocean on all sides beneath a sky undistinguished by sun or other stars. Its centre is nowhere to be found. Outcomes acquaint themselves to us at their discretion. Judgment of nations suffices to sleep on a bed of hardwood cut from a forest that will never grow back quickly enough. The bats are cooing from the eaves, digging through the hay beneath with only the threads of their trebles and half a litre of ink spilled from the right hand. Whoever so desires may walk away on their own, or ride down-current in imitation of those pieces of history that missed the riverine fisherfolk’s nets. Neither religious nor worldly demonstration can tell us what is right or wrong in this case.

Testimony

after excerpts from Conversation No. 741-2 (the “smoking gun” tape) from the Watergate Trial Tapes

we’ll open before summer​​ / for the sweat of the palms trapped in the glasshouse / who have draped their leaves down one another’s backs / unable to swallow four seasons without frost //​​ we’ll receive the signal from across the river​​ / to keep going when the islands disappear / arkosic heads drowned in the mouth of flood // some flowerbeds know when the end is near / for the ground makes a kiln of itself /​​ but nights, we’ll be back in the problem area​​ / watching the jaw drop open and the skull release its hold //​​ we learned to trace the stars not through themselves​​ / but sideways, by the shimmering of their argent stomachs across the insomniac sea //​​ they have some obscure reason for it, not political​​ / but anarchic, recalling dispatches from the cold side / of the desert we have left unread //​​ we say we wish for no country but this​​ / this the body beneath which our fathers lie / its sternum not the front for a heart / but only a place to rest while we wait / for a sounding from the half-infinite deep