On Ai Weiwei’s “Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn”
By Angelo Mao
The urn lies broken into shards.
The man stands behind it with hands
raised. The backdrop is a brick wall.
It started as a joke with my husband.
Chinese words once read right-to-left.
The photo is Chinese. Therefore reading right-
to-left, the backwards order, would be
legitimate. If it were legitimate,
it would not be backward. One urn shard
hunches like a territorial crab. It lords
a b(r)each. Rules are hard to forget.
The urn is knee-height above the floor.
The man stands behind it with hands
raised. The backdrop is a brick wall.
The man stands like a territorial crab.
The photo is Chinese and once had
urn shards on the tiled floor. It started
as a joke (what are the rules?) with my
husband. We lord a breach of rules.
The man’s messy hair like urn shards.
The dis-shattered urn is a Han piece.
Dismemberment was earned by trea-
son. Rules for forgetting are harder.
The man has hair like my father.
The urn is held in a man’s hands.
The man stands with his back to
the wall. The wall is made of bricks.
The shattered urn lies on the floor.
Wrong: it lies in the past. The urn
has been made whole with no seams.
Pieces are dis-remembered. The man
with black hair unruly as crabgrass
will not drop the urn. But how can we
know? What are rules tomorrow
can’t breach? He has forgiven
the urn. They have forgiven each
other. Everything can now go unsaid.
Still: the man holds the urn in the air.
That’s hard to forget. Nobody does.
Source: Poetry (December 2021)