We shouted back and forth from
sibling peaks, myself
and the stranger who was wearing
either a white shirt or a white
jacket with black trousers
or dark jeans. He mirrored me,
maybe, my work clothes
dampened with sweat, my throat
tested further than a day of teaching
the almost-deaf could truly test.
We asked questions of the other.
I threw my second language
into the chasm of sound
and he caught it on the wind.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
stares at me from the window
of a tea house hidden in the woods
of Ge Hill, the familiar face in a land
of otherwise unfamiliar faces.
Must be a small world to find a Frisco
poet framed as such in Hangzhou,
a coincidence he no doubt
would appreciate, and find
better words with which to convey
pictures of a… world. The same
tea house has a library; I find a copy
of Finnegan’s Wake, and pity
he who had the task of translating
all of it from foreign to foreign.
A feat comparable to the original;
I try, and Lawrence watches with a smile.
Keep your breath to cool your porridge
Colleen; bawl aroof
seufsighted, stilstand
Goddinpotty (garden party).
Lavastories, farfar, tawfulsdreck,
all my eye vocable;
goddammed turkey sweep / swede
hurries out – oxhide on Iren.
Halfaloafonwashed, half a league
onwards darling, leap tear
muddied Susanna spalpeens
amusers, robbers, pantalime concepta.
i
The fish in the small pond
below Baopu Taoist Temple
and halfway up Ge Hill
must be the stillest fish
in China, as if trapped
in amber.
I sprinkle breadcrumbs;
they reluctantly scatter.
ii
I have written poems
in stranger places than this,
perched on the stone bench
not made for meditating,
my skin slick with sweat,
translating
Taoist mantras with my heart
peaking above Sunrise Terrace.
There is the Way, which
I have found is sometimes
the Highway, the water
down through the nooks
in the rock dampens our
laminated blessings.
I consider my luck,
and find that I am lucky.
Craig Writes Things 