Some Observations In A Coffee Shop In Suzhou Poem by Birgit Bunzel Linder

In a cozy café in Suzhou
one can browse The New Yorker and Doris Day.
(Both old, incidentally)
Greece on the wall,
America on the table cloth,
Russia on the liquor list,
Hungary on the phonograph,
and a whole territory on your plate.

You put Mukherjee aside
to watch the trash man drop it all outside.
99% of those on motorbikes are female,
plus one male with a boy.

They light an oil lamp for you,
to illuminate your continental breakfast
and your Darjeeling tea.

How many worries you have swallowed so far!
The shop owner lectures you on brown sugar versus Splenda.
You choose headache over hypoglycemia.

The printed table cloths tell humble stories
of Midwestern proprieties.
None of them is your story,
not even the one entitled “All things grow with love.”

Some grow without love.
And some in spite of love.
Like you.

Suspended between clocks and visions,
you know what is out there.
Hanshan Temple.
Red incense burning over grey skies.
Imaginary tranquility
of the kind life does not grant often anymore.

The sugar twirls in your hot tea.
What has not settled by now,
will not settle.
What has been done,
cannot be undone.