Written by Mel Reichler Copyright 2002
Chinese Poems
ABIDING SORROW
An emperor dreams dreams
and makes them come true.
A beautiful woman is a dream.
Both have a terrible awakening.
He awakes to find his dream slipping from him
in an ooze of blood and
dust.
She awakens into a blood damp nightmare that lasts
forever.
Our dream is abiding sorrow; our awakening, to
realize that
there is no abiding sorrow
only a pain that lasts a long time.
The air is rose colored in the Jinling's
The erhu spins it song
more sorrowfully than usual.
A man walks in looking like the emperor of some
corporation.
On his arm a beautiful lady.
Moth eyed exactly, dress like the opalescent
covering of a moth.
He glows full of the pleasure of her, yet is not
sated.
She reconnoitres his
desire.
Dinner is an unwelcome respite.
Will it come to a bloody end on the
Probably not.
But there are other painful awakenings, dusty
roads in other places.
Someone should tell the emperor;
Emperors are prisoners of empires.
You can not trust soldiers or lawyers or
accountants.
They don't give a fig about the emperor's
pleasures
or his abiding sorrow.
Moth eyes do no usually last any longer than
moths.
Sorrow may not be eternal but what there is of it
last long enough and repeats itself.
Dear
Bai Juyi
I like your poems.
A mirror, better than a
mirror.
My fact stares back as if it were
reflected from the silvered
bottom
of a mountain pond
as if the image were set
free from a glass of fluid dimensions.
No glare from a sun dim one thousand years
but enough illumination.
The features of my face are softened--yours too.
A breeze gently ripples the surface of the mirror
my face peels from the
glass like a tiny wave
and falls on the dresser
in
my room at the Jinling.
I like your poems.
The text: how to ask simple,
unanswerable
questions.
I like your poems
but I want to ask you
what, in Chinese fashion,
did you neglect to mention.
What filled the gaps?
As my lady sits in the
gap of my life.
Passion in china.
It is easy loving her. It is not easy loving me.
I am traife--a
foreigner--an embarassment. Her passion jerks her
around to face those who
stare at her.
She is forever in motion.
Outside the window of my office they are
building a house. The architecture: Brick walls smeared with
cement.
The walls are up and the bamboo poles to support
the roof. They are
laying corrugated panels
for the roof--plastic.
There is a crew of nine, but only three are
working. Six are
kibbutzing or grousing.
It will be an oven in the summer,
ice house cold in the
winter
but it will keep the rain
and wind out.
When they are finished it will look as if it has
been
lived in for centuries.
Outside the window of my room at the Jinling
they are rebuilding all of
The architecture:
Cement smeared brick. The walls
are up
they are waiting for heaven
to provide a roof.
On Zhongshan Lu,
battalions of ladies with brooms, head dressed for
a country fair, bottom
for daylabor, raise clouds of dust and keep
them in motion.
space held together with
string.
It lifts people out of the water
and tosses them on to the
sand
where they gasp for air.
Times change. There is dust everywhere and the smell of
progress is
in the air.
Times change. Rice is cheap and there is enough
but it is served with
grit.
I am writing because I thought I saw you
twice in the last few days.
The first time, "in white gown, short boots
hat pulled over your eyes,
Sichun
walking stick hanging from your belt." You were in the
crowd waiting for the
number 5 bus, making a fist
with words.
The second time, lying with your back
to the sun next to the
scum covered pool near the red pavilion at
the institute. A peony clung respectfully to your foot.
Illusions, I know--yet I recognized you clearly.
A incorrigible habit but
innocent enough.
What harm can come from seeing dead men.
The live men here are ghosts often enough.
I am afraid I am drunk on
I am 51
not an official, not a
poet, not even a Han
I am entangled in disorder.
My children and my ex-wife are coming to visit in
July
My lady is in
who will not ask
questions.
Wu fights Chi.
I am 51 picking at a loose thread but try not to
pull too hard lest
my clothing unravel
and leave me naked in
I am 51 and lovesick
no sensible, not
reasonable.
Like the emperor, passion has left me
bereft of common sense.
Court is of no matter, matters of state,
inconsequential.
I am hung up on a
no army to move me
forward
no army to carry me back.
Everyone is an official, now, though few hold
office.
Everyone is an official, now, but without passion.
But look where passion has gotten me.
My lady lies on the bed
crying about what she cannot
have.
It was not easy.
She longs for a child.
The most I can do is hold onto her tightly
and greedily imitate a
child.
It is not the same thing.
Dear Juyi, write me
about pain and love
and a society gone wild.
I can use the advice of a dead man because
the advice of the living
is of no value at all.
THE JINLING BAT
A bat has found its way into the lobby of the Jinling hotel.
Order dissolves.
The girls in their tawny uniforms move away from
their posts and cluster like
deer,
the doormen in their freedonia uniforms with the gold braid,
siddle up.
They stand around gaping.
Even the attention of the black suited
security people is caught. They observe it
stoney eyed as if it were a
breech in security,
and whisper to one another
over the devices they hold
in their hands.
The girls jump and giggle as the creature darts
from one place to
another; the boys stand
bravely demonstrating their manhood.
The bat realizes something is wrong; it misses his
usual darkness.
It has made some horrible error.
It tries to unmake it, looking for some door in
the ceiling,
a back door that will
release it
to the darkness again.
The manager frowns. The foreigners may complain.
There may be a letter to the China Daily. He thinks,
"You can never tell what upsets them."
As if to certify his worst fears a bus filled with
tourists swings through the
gate.
One big traveller with
100 arms and 100 legs
and 100 eyes moves jerkily
into the lobby.
The manager has no quarrel with the bat. There were many
in the straw roofs of the
houses.
It is only a little bat. but the tourists.
It is impossible to know what offends them.
He feels sorry for the bat but maintains a stern
face.
The girls in their fawn colored uniforms let go of
the excitement
reluctantly and return slowly
to their posts behind the
desk.
The tourists, tired from a day of sightseeing
crowd around
The manger makes a decision. He whispers something
to the maintainance men whose shift is over and
who have already prepared
to go home.
A net appears from somewhere, a tall ladder from
somewhere else.
"Try not to kill it," he whispers loudly,
to no one in particular.
It will not be his responsibility if it dies.
The workmen chase it, moving the ladder
clumsily from place to place.
Finally one corners it behind some ornament,
and ornate dragon.
Angry at the fact that the fluid, elusive animal
has made him stay
after his shift was over
he smashed it angrily
with the rim of the net,
making no effort to catch it.
It utters an almost human cry,
a sound utterly foreign
to the Jinling, clings for a moment
then falls into the net.
The tourists confused stand still momentarily
then pull away.
Once dead the bat holds no interest for the
manager and he turns
and disappears quickly
into his office.
The ladder is taken down and things ebb to the
edge of the wave of
the evening rush.
Only the echo of the bats cry lingers over the
coffee and beer
on the second floor
lounge.
THE
OLD MAN OF DULING
Why should the emperor get such good report.
It's not to his credit that reason dawns: he
should have known better all
along.
Honest spies are a people's best friend.
Postumous honors, postumous relief
taxes, comfort that comes
too late
are the marks of
civilization.
Short pleasures after a long wait.
Plumes of grief
always arise from human
fires,
then quickly dissipate.
fThe emperor turns, deftly
lifting his brush from the
white hempen paper, feels
the high of
having done something good;
he is
filled with imperial grace.
The old man of Duling
sighs in pain. He clasps his
emptiness knowing, even
if the emperor is just
there is no justice.
Official winds never blow straight.
The
One Armed Old Man
Sometimes the sound of the army recruiter comes
as a growl, low over the
hills, skimming the trees,
sometimes it rings smartly like
a bell through
the village, a brisk
command.
Sometimes it is not more than an urgent whisper,
growing louder as it echos off the bodies of
stunned men hectored into
bushy lines.
Patriotism is the rage today;
We believe in just wars,
wars of liberation
wars to prevent war. Honorable wars.
Our choice is never between better and best.
If we are lucky it is betwen
horrible and
terrible. At worst, it is between the
unthinkable and the inimaginable.
One should not agonize over a decision
between the shadow of
something improbable and
the afterimage of
something impossible.
It is absurd to think such a selection is a
choice.
One should decide in the fashion of children,
"One potato, two potato---"
Usually a heavy stone is not of much use. It
gets in the way. At night one trips on it,
during the day one mistakes
it for something useful
left in the grass, a
basket, a coil of rope.
Heaps of heavy volumes of old books, like stones
are also nearly useless.
During the day, one wants novels
Nights are for stumbling over technical books,
something useful at work.
When the sound of guns and swords drift down to
the valley
and the recruiter calls in
that soft demanding voice
that will not be dimmed or
denied by shut ears
a heavy stone is a
useful thing. It makes a real choice
possible.
An arm smashed at the shoulder, falling of its own
weight, a bloody stone on the
ground or dying in
The old man gives good advice; don't hesitate.
Hoist the stone.
What war means is a lot of
dead bodies in
dying admist
scattered bones.
When
When
When
When
When the nightmare passes, millions snore softly
again.
When
When
When
When
When it is remembered, millions remember it again.
In
In
In
In
In
In
sometime, usually on a Tuesday.
No small ruptures, no small breaks; privacy is a
wet dream of children
who instead of blocks
receive a set of ambiguities to build toy houses with.
They learn an architecture
of contradictions; they learn the back door
is always in the front of
the house.
In
When
When
When
II
Culture of Motley
Culture of dull.
Culture of Putitan,
Culture of Unbad.
Culture of Spit.
Culture of Snot.
Mouth Culture
Culture of indirection,
culture of unstraight lines.
Culture of arcs with
infinite curvature.
The rule holds:
Victory passes. Defeat
passes.
Only what is official endures.
III
In the absence of a revolution the workers must
take
jobs-whatever they can get.
It is only temporary, the
revolution will be back again.
Mao passes me on the street, disguised as a
professor, great coat pulled
back by a gust of wind,
barely hiding his disdain for the
crawl toward the 21st
century.
Lucious, languid, frigid shopgirls
bored to death dealing
pounds of candy
doze, while winter creep up
on them.
Mao regards them with disdain also.
He stops before the Jinling,
marvel of
Because he is Chinese and has no business there
they will
not let him in the gate.
Later, through a backdoor, he makes his way to the
revolving top floor.
In his honor the 36th floor stops turning and all
of
His glare is pitless.
Imitating Groucho Marx
he asks, "For
this we made a
revolution."
He mediates loudly.
"It is not enough to make a revolution. It is not enought
to remake it. Is there anything that can save the
revolution from its
successes?"
The waitress brings him a brandy.
The liquor loosens the lute of his tongue and his
complaints become characters on
the wall behing Jimm
King and his Hawaiians.
"Those who want to,
shouldn't.
Those who will, can't.
Those who should, may
not.
Those who can, won't
We are always having to
choose between getting things
done not quite well enough
and getting them done at all."
In Fudzemiao, in a
restaurant, a beggar begs by banging
his head on the table,
thump, thump.
Mao slips him a few fen
and the revolution and the beggar
gives him small change back.
IV
Something appears on the mountain in
distance, indisting
through the dust.
It appears to be a man on a bicycle who seems to
be
carrying something.
It is hard to distinguish the man from the bicycle
and
easy to confuse him with an
ancient poem about the
mountain or the latest party
directive about mountains.
Obscured by dust it is not easy to tell what he is
doing
on the mountain and the
bike rider throws up his own
dust. It might be better if he did not ride so
quickly.
As we get closer, it turns out to be really only a
large
sign on the mountain, a
picture of a man carrying a box
of bicycle parts on his
back.
Dust provides the illusion of movement--the muntain
point one way, the man
points in another.
V
I went to the countryside for a vacation. Not a vacation
exactly: 10 hours work for 7 cents a day, the value of
a
plastic button.
In the evening I taught illiterates to read. They slept as
they learned.
My father's father owned three factories. My father
managed them for the stte. Then for a
vacation he went
to work in one of them as
a cook. The factory managed
itself for a while then it
went on a vacation also.
When my father became a rightest
mymother took off on a
vacation. Before the country went on vacation I raised
a
brother and a sister.
I came out a backdoor wide but not wide enought and fell
into a hold not deepbut deep enough.
I found a place to
hide, large but not large
enough.
I would like to paint but teaching English is my ricebowl.
The
Institute
On the day we came, the first day
we heard the tatoo of dull empty thuds and asked, "What
were those noises, what's
making those sounds?"
They said, "children
playing;
perhaps a house is falling;
thunder,"--although the day
was clear--"fireworks
maybe," and looked chagrined.
On the second day when we went out we heard the
tango of
sour percussive sounds and
asked, "what kind of sounds are those?"
We insisted they answer, demanded the truth not a
fairy tale.
"Guns," they said, "weapons are
being tested, far from the
Institute; well, just near the city wall-
actually, just outside the
gate.
Unfortunately, next to
where you teach.
When we first ate, our first dinner
when the plates came we asked,
"What's in that dish, what
kind of food is that?"
They said, "vegtables,
spices, doufou and meat," and
looked chagrined.
Next day at supper when the meal was served we
asked, "What's in that
stew, what kind of food is
that?" We
insisted they answer, demanded
the truth not a fairy tale.
It's not cow," they said, "not goat not
sheep not pig. It
barked," they said and
struggled for the noun.
When from our window we first saw people passing,
when we
first went outside and
walked and saw the people walking,
we asked, "Why are
the people so sad, why does every person over eight
wear a disguise of dispair?"
They said, "Summer
has gone and winter is coming
fast--though it was Spring.
On the second day as we sat and watched the people
forlornly watching birds and
watching us we asked,
"Why do the people ooze unhappiness, why does
every person over eight
wear a mask of dispair?" We
insisted they
answer, demanded the truth
not a fairy tale.
"Dancing is forbidden," they said,
"husbands and wives
live somewhere else. Some want to write but they are
engineers, some want to paint
but chemistry
is what they do. some want to
sing...."
We turned away.
We do not ask questions any more, settle for what
we
happen to be told.
We do not indluge our
whim for clarity.
On clear days when it thunders we look for rain.
We settle for culinary ambiguity. Now that winter has come
reunited families seem happy
again.
During the vacation, while we were away,
we heard there was
dancing every day. Someone's novel is
about to
appear;
the exhibition of
paintings merely has been delayed.
We do not ask questions any more, we settle for
what we happen to be
told.
We do not ask questions any more and are not told
more than we want to know.
Lu Shan poems
I
Thinking of summer I wanted to go south.
I went south, took only light summer things to
wear
went south but up, Lu
Shan's mountain's chill
taught me the limitations of
horizontal thinking.
II
(Lu Shan)
To close, can't see, not close enough
can't see.
To far can't see, not far enough
can't see.
Just right-see a blur.
Above, can't see, below can't see
outside, can't see, inside
can't see.
Just right-see sea
changes.
Sun to mist,
mist to rain,
rain to snow,
snow to sun.
Bu ren
shi Lu Shan jen mian mu.
III
Dog,s feet in paw caligraphy.
Hen's feet verse on bamboo themes.
Melting snow makes rain beneth
the trees.
As we two alone await the fog which advances
slowly like an ancient
army,
we write with icicles in
the snow;
unnamable longings,impossible
dreams.
IV
Snow
Taut crystals primed to implode into wetness
(pent up wetness.)
Restless, a blanket for
the mountain.
Blown sugar as it melts in the mouth,
gives the trees a tongue to
gossip
about Lu Shan's magic.
V
Scrubbed caligraphy on
buildings
mark recently obscured,
barely historical events.
An inventory of ancient
poems complete the scenery.
The snow covered mountains seem to labor gently
to be born again tomorrow
and drift up stream slowly
into memory.
VI
Kurtz, in the twentieth century, in
his memory repeatedly
suffering minor deaths,
telexes over and over
in caligraphic
breaths
what he cannot remember but
cannot forget;
Net the net.
VII
By the lake
we make an inventory of
what we lack:
a place to smoke
a boat
a way home
and, although we are
sitting side by side
each other.
A boulder on a distant mountain
frames your face.
It appears precariously balanced
and about to fall.