John Balaban

FOR MISS TIN IN HUE

The girl (captured; later, freed)
and I (cut by a centimeter of lead)
remember well the tea you steeped
for us in the garden as music played
and the moon plied the harvest dusk.
You read the poem on a Chinese vase
that stood outside your father's room
where he dozed in a mandarin dream
of King Gia Long's reposing at Ben Ngu.
We worry that you all are safe.
A house with pillars carved in poems
is floored by green rice fields;
and roofed by all the heavens of this world.

Gia Long: 19th century emperor