What Happens in China
"Poetry does not make anything happen." (Auden)
"Tianamen Square is outside China." (A Political Cartoon)
1
It is the shades
of May '68
What is its legacy?
2
Its legacy
is to make children
man barricades
-- an act of pity and courage
(There is no time for tears.
The Great Square smells of shit.)
3
Now the soldiers move in:
mothers pacify them with rice
fathers send rain-gear
brothers cart away garbage
doctors predict an epidemic
The children watch the sky
for typhoon or tear-gas --
For both will surely come.
4
Bathing, eating, entertainment
go on as usual
Nothing much has changed
Except now even in Canton
Politics is a new kind of business
5
They bake cookies
roast duck
glaze porcelain
paint emptiness
Remember Li Po, Tu Fu
Confucius
All the dowager empresses:
Mme Mao not least among them
6
No one abandoned
gunpowder, magnet, paper
nor calligraphy
7
"This is not the work
of students
or the poeple" --
Message on defaced Mao portrait
Now officialese
8
As long as
there are sit-ins
There is hope
Even if the army moves in
Nothing is static
CHINA IS A STATE OF MIND
9
Coda:
Everything is static
Nothing moves
Everything is empty
Everything is poetry.
Previous | Next | Contents | Selected Poems