Ten Thousand to One
By Arthur Sze
The Phoenicians guarded a recipe that required
ten thousand murex shells to make
an ounce of Tyrian purple.
Scan the surface of Aldebaran with a radio wave;
grind lapis lazuli
into ultramarine.
Search the summer sky for an Anasazi turkey constellation;
see algae under an electron microscope
resemble a Magellanic Cloud.
A chemist tried to convert benzene into quinine,
but blundered into a violet
aniline dye instead.
Have you ever seen maggots feed on a dead rat?
Listen to a red-tailed hawk glide
over the hushed spruce and
pines in a canyon. Feel a drop of water roll
down a pine needle, and glisten,
hanging, at the tip.
Copyright Credit: “Ten Thousand to One” from Arthur Sze’s The Redshifting Web: Poems 1970-1998 (1998), appears by permission of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org.
Source: The Redshifting Web: Poems 1970-1998 (Copper Canyon Press, 1998)