In oracle-bone script, the character for attunement
is a series of bamboo pipes tied together with string,
if only I had the words to make things that accord
in tone vibrate together. Sunlight streams between slats
of a fence onto the ground. I gaze across the field;
skunks have slipped into the neighbors garden
and ravaged corn. At the mouth of an arroyo, someone
has drained engine oil into the sand, thrown quart
containers into the brush. “Goddam,” I whisper,
bending to pick cherry tomatoes, discover a large
grasshopper sunning on a branch. I imagine holding
a set of black-lacquered panpipes, blowing on them
for the first time in two thousand years. In the wobbly
beginning is a swish, then water trembling through bamboo,
tossed gravel, a dog’s bark, throats slit, sleet,
footsteps, love-cries. I start as notes reverberate
in air; frost has shriveled the leaves into black bits.




Oracle-Bone Script (甲骨文) is the oldest known systematic form of written Chinese. 
It dates back to the late Shang Dynasty (c. 1250–1050 BCE). The script was primarily 
etched onto ox shoulder blades and turtle shells for royal divination rituals.