4 A.M., MAKE LOVE TO ME
for Shuying
23.1.2006
It’ll be 4 a.m. soon,
every day. And today’s deficiency
is a rehearsal for a long string of deficiencies at some future time
(and, at that time, I won’t be, but you will.
Or, you won’t be, but I will.)
Like Robert Frank’s black and white Polaroids.
But perhaps we only grow older, more mysterious,
like June in the photo, 4 a.m.,
in a foreign hotel, 50 years old, naked, one hand raised, another on a hip,
posturing like a flamingo dancing, a solemn face under bright lights.
‘Make love to me, please,’ make love to me, Robert called.
4 a.m. brought a brighter shining light, dawn
had already arrived in 1979. The year you were born.
Let’s fast-forward: Robert’s son grew up, became a hippie, died,
Robert married, divorced, married again,
he locked away his Leica, took up filmmaking, then only shot Polaroids,
“Polaroid—passed quickly,
images fade gradually—like a life opposed to preservation,”
you wrote in your notes on Robert Frank,
how his later photos made you burst into tears,
separation, love, numerous separations, you experienced it all
we eventually married, you continued writing poetry, fairy tales,
taking photos with a pinhole camera, consumed by dozens of new projects;
you’d run away from home, climbed over the wall of a student hostel and fled, losing your
way in Beijing and Guangzhou,
your body receiving people who loved you and strangers,
the camera pans to tonight, you’re on an evening flight north, drifting among a sea of stars.
‘4 a.m., make love to me,’ as I’m skimming Robert’s filmography
The Lines of My Hand, I can’t not miss you thousands of miles up in the sky.
I think of holding you tight, your flesh and blood,
walking together into a thousand-hectare void of the past, of the future, of the next moment,
walking into death, of which we’ve never been afraid. Saying
‘4 a.m., make love to me.’