Du Fu (and a passenger's thoughts)

  
  
    filled
    with snow and shine
    with rains and stars
    the skies
    were a living
    spacious room
    to the ones
    in Du Fu's care

    today
    the clouds below
    glow but throw
    a shadow
    down onto
    the gray Atlantic

    if this
    metallic bird
    were a writer
    and lost
    its small ones in fog
    it'd be a poet
    after a million miles
    like Du Fu
    a thousand and more
    years ago
    sailing up and down
    chinese rivers
    merging
    into the other
    ocean

    no highways
    cross apartments and homes
    plush wall to wall

    the hot air
    between the seat of a comfy chair
    and the seat of acceptable slacks
    might be loud
    but will never
    shoot the pen
    thru the ceiling

    the monkeys on slopes and hills are long gone

    the paper money and tax forms multiply

    come travel Du Fu again
    cross with us the white water
    at the edge of the new millenium
    sail up and down the electronic streams
    amplify the faint echo
    of your social concern
    of the color of your children's pain
    paint the chinese mountains in crisp fractals
    and pour the eternal wine

    there'll be never another poet like you


Wlodzimierz Holsztynski
  1992-05-16/19