The Chinese Compass Lost Its Bearings

He wanted to be a star mummified in gold gauze

or a newt camouflaged in flame. If all else failed,

he imagined doing time as an evangelist on a ghost ship,

mooring at the globe’s fleshpots before sailing

into a night that dazzled him with signs of its origin.

No wonder the crew lashed him to a mast

and nailed a doubloon over his head.

If he’d spoken their language, he could have learned

to untie knots on his wrists with his tongue, slipped

into the sea like a porpoise, done something safe.

Nobody expected our search for him to end

in a Mongol’s ger by a windmill clattering over a latrine.

The stink of goats, the cows chained to spikes

and bellowing, the lightning pricking mountains

reminded me of summers on his Swedish farm.

At the checkpoint, Chinese military police

took our passports, threatened to hit our Land Cruiser

with missiles or machine guns, then lock us in jail.

“We abandon the route,” our Chinese guide said.

“Uighur terrorists run guns here. We become targets.”

That’s when the toy compass lost its bearings,

the guide lost face, stared at sun lancing dust clouds

rather than study maps, at grapes shriveling

into raisins in the Turfan Depression’s brick huts.

The air conditioner gagged. The radiator fumed.

Diesel and water tanks leaked from the roof.

Only when clouds turned into mountain snowfields

beyond the ger did it seem inevitable—

the warnings at checkpoints, the ghost of my ancestor

evaporating from desert ruts I could never follow.