The Middle Kingdom

I

Along the Beijing avenues-
The geomancers’ gridiron-
Uniform commuters move in hordes,
Driven by edicts from Heaven.
Blankfaced, tarmac canyons
Imperiously refuse any echo.

Tiananmen Square-
Acres of arid stone-
Numbs and crushes
The compass heart.

In the bathhouse soapsmooth boyish amphibians
Recline, intoxicated, broiling in vaporous broth,
Sybarites, blurred to apparitions,
Eyeblinks retarded to torpid flitters,
Somnambulantly mumbling in the mist.
Emaciated old men, shuffling, pained,
Heave their wheezy jalopies into the swim,
As into a welcome grave.
In the dressing room exhausted bodies
Lie like corpses in a mortuary,
Coughing and hawking under linen shrouds.

Scarlet pavilions and yellow rooves
Of the Forbidden City, palanquin of dragons,
Holding its measured marble up to the sun.
Balanced palaces mass their serenity
Symmetrically; terraces ascend
To the Halls of Harmony.

At dawn in the public gardens,
Along every path, in every clearing,
Limbs life, extend, rotate,
Gravely eurhythmic,
Slow silhouettes flow with tai ch’i chuan,
The tremulous sun takes flight
From old women’s fingertips.
Old men suspend birdcages from trees
Then sit on benches, smiling,
As they listen to beloved birds’ song.

The nightmare abacus is clacking,
And the festival of degustation:
Famished stares and rapt cries,
Orgiasts burping with gusto,
Spiting out bones with whipcrack éclat;
Chopsticks twirl like fire-drills,
Jigging bodies flame,
Devouring the world,
Braised, stewed, fried, boiled and roasted,
Descending to the halls of Hell.

The Temple of Heaven turns on a spindle of light,
Within the square, withn the circle,
Bowing to the Altar of Heaven,
To the power of nine.
A distant giant’s voice re-echoes from the centre,
The moveless moment out of time.

II

Smokeblue mountains exhale fields of maize and sorghum,
Peasants in harness trudge the furrows,
Hauling the cloud-plough of time.
Buffalo teams toil through paddy fields;
Cormorants dive into the moon.

Red lacquer coffins set sail in the Emperors’ tombs,
Chrysalid skeletons in silk,
Dragons snapping at a fiery pearl.

The Great Wall lopes off to the mountains,
Laughed at by cicadas’ wings.
A praying mantis lifts its prehistoric mask,
Jade eyes empty of fear.
Beyond the barrier writhes the Land of Demons,
A distorting mirror, curtains drawn across.

III

Suzhou lies like a glow-worm in the night,
Fish-scale rooves glissade above the currents.
Calligrapher’s ideogram, the garden city
Unfurls its silk-scroll dream of yin and yang.



IV

Clouds fall from Heaven’s boughs
Into the Western Lake;
Autumn’s ink-wash imbues Hangzhou;
Air and water impersonate each other.

V

It is raining on Mount Emei;
The pilgrims’ path disappears in cloud;
Voices, mixed with birdsong, tremor in the dripping forest;
Bamboo stems lightly shudder.
All is faded and unreal,
Save this stairway that goes on forever.
Rain clatters on the monastery roof,
And pilgrim clouds flurry through doors,
Glisten on flagstones.
A sodden monkey-huddle grimace on the veranda.
In the prayer hall straw mats are rotting,
Mildewed Buddha’s squat behind glass.
Damp glazes floorboards and weeps down walls.
Ghosts flitter amid the maple branches,
Looking out over the abyss.
The long climb ends in a precipice,
Whence ecstatic worshippers
Have sometimes launched themselves into the void,
Becoming rainbows.

VI

Where the Yellow River tautens between steep banks.
Cormorant fishermen pole upstream.
West of Xian duststorms writhe on the loess.
Hivernal canyons shrink to trickling ice,
The wind throws razorblades.
At the Great Wall’s end, where the Gobi Desert
Grimaces into colourless sky,
Chaos presses through the mind’s mountain passes,
And beneath the last broken tower
A banished river grovels in mountains’ glare.