moss

In a class a few days ago I read Archibald MacLeish's "Ars Poetica". Here's the first section:

A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,

Dumb
as old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown -

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.


I was wearing a long-sleeved blouse that day. I propped my elbows on the panel and I rubbed them against the wood. That is how the stone becomes sleeve-worn, I said, from the people who sat by the windows, resting their arms along the ledges, looking out, looking down.

The smooth stone takes on a mossy facade. This suggests the time that has passed since the ledges were last warmed. I was suddenly reminded of the moss on the ground by the drains and the moss on the sides of the pond in my primary school. I liked to pat the moss, drawn by the dark green hue and the nappy feel of it, like the beginnings of hair on a baby's head.

Is it possible to find moss on this campus? I asked the students.

In November last year I visited a campus in Taipei and was elated by the sight of bicycles. Maybe it's to do with the universities I attended, both of them cycling towns. But to see bicycles parked everywhere, outside the main gate, the side gate, in the parking space in front of buildings, - it seemed proper. The unkempt look of bicycles with missing tyres, the forlorn expression of the ones that had been abandoned - these too were reassuring.

It wasn't just the bicycles, there were also parts of the campus that looked vintage and sleepy. I think if I was a student I would always remember these parts. I saw walls overgrown with climbers. If I had looked closer, I would have found some moss, of this I am quite sure.

If there was time enough for moss to grow, the story of the moss and the story of the stone of old buildings left to grow old