Lidded Ritual Grain Container with Lozenges and Scrolls, 6th–5th Century B.C.E.

 

Is it the colour or is it the form,

so full and round,

has me fall in love with this shapely urn

meant to hold grain?

I don’t care what it was made to contain

in the line of imposed need,

its duty,

its purpose to feed.

I simply warm

to its plain beauty; 

I yearn

to clasp and hold 

the whole to my body, or bang

my fingernails on its outer shell

to hear its long, reverberating clang.

It is very old,

coloured faint pink and soft green

(which I think of as colours of healing),

a closer look revealing

those patterns of lozenges and scrolls.

The label says bronze, so I know

it would have that clanging sound,

if I struck it like an instrument: a deep knell

ringing for its past people

and all the places it and they had been – 

like a solemn church bell

that tolls

deep and low

in a lonely steeple.

NaPoWriMo Day Nine

Image of the container, in  the online gallery of the Peabody-Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, from the Chinese art collection: click here and scroll down.