Autumn Moth

By Ma Yongbo

Dark. Glass window. Flickering brown moth
with a skeleton, appears. Colder indoors
not a day we heat the house
no one has chopped firewood.
We wrap ourselves in quilts, watch TV: recount
childhood summers, catching spinning insects
under mercury–yellowish streetlights
As for moths, they are just powder, just butterflies in disguise.

It’s said they’ll burn freckles on your face
proof that combustion is granular coldness.
Are there white eggs embedded on its back?
It inserts a straw deep into the window glass, to drink the bright
light,
eyes larger than its head, blank, focused,
craving bread crusts and tattered cotton fluff.

A moment of panic as if drowsiness struck —
it will spin with the cooling planet, the years and the withered
trees,
keep spinning, when the house finally empties
like a thin cocoon, swaying on dark branches.