THE HUMBLE ADMINISTRATOR'S GARDEN

A plump gold carp nudges a lily pad
And shakes the raindrops off like mercury,
And Mr Wang walks round. 'Not bad, not bad.'
He eyes the Fragrant Chamber dreamily.
He eyes the Rainbow Bridge. He may have got
The means by somewhat dubious means, but now
This is the loveliest of all gardens. What
Do scruples know of beauty anyhow?
The Humble Administrator admires a bee
Poised on a lotus, walks through the bamboo wood,
Strips half a dozen loquats off a tree
And looks about and sees that it is good.
He leans against a willow with a dish
And throws a dumpling to a passing fish.
 
 

UNCLAIMED
 

To make love with a stranger is the best.
There is no riddle and there is no test.—

To lie and love, not aching to make sense
Of this night in the mesh of reference.

To touch, unclaimed by fear of imminent day,
And understand, as only strangers may.

To feel the beat of foreign heart to heart
Preferring neither to prolong nor part.

To rest within the unknown arms and know
That this is all there is; that this is so.
 
 

from THE GOLDEN GATE
 

7.1
When fear grows too intense to handle,
We shrink into a private smile,
Surprised when here and there a candle
Drives back the dark a little while,
A little space, before it gutters;
Or in the madness a voice utters
Words full of calm that to us seem
To bear the dry light of a dream
And stain our waking with more sorrow.
The night of hate that covers earth,
The generous country of our birth,
The Single land from which we borrow
All that is ours-air, insight, tears,
Our fragile lives-for a few years,

7.2
That night of hate grows dense around us.
We laugh through what we can't dispel,
While apathy and terror hound us
On well-intentioned paths to hell.
Best to concede, to the septic chorus
Of the world's counsels, what's good for us,
And let them, if they choose to, mar
Our common earth with civil war.
Live day to day; relieve a little
What sorrow lies within our scope;
A moratorium on hope
Will, if it makes our laughter brittle,
Lend peace until that day of wrath
When the smooth doomtoys hurtle forth.

7.3
What, after all, is earth's creation?
A virus in the morgue of space.
What's Mozart but a weird vibration
congenial to a brain-sick race
Rabid with virulence. Why bother
If things like these should maul each other
And, dying, yelp that they have won?
If clouds of dust occlude their sun
From them, it still shines undiminished
In its small galaxy. No change
Of note is likely when this strange
Irradiated beast has finished
Vomiting filth upon its bed
Of inhumanity, and is dead.

7.4

Some disagree. Heroic, silly
-Whichever-they have gathered here
In the pre-dawn, dew-damp and chilly,
On one of two days in the year
When light and night share day's dimension
In equal halves. To ease their tension
(For near them, where a cyclone fence
Delimits the circumference
Of Lungless Labs, police stand sentry,
Guarding a road, checkpost, and gate),
They sing aloud, and celebrate
Fall's sombre equinoctial entry
By lighting candles in an arc
Against the encroachment of the dark.

7.5
Dawn rises over Lungless redly.
The pioneers of the blockade
Are joined now by a motley medley;
A marching carnival parade
Starts out from Lungless Park, cavorting
Along to Lungless Labs, supporting
Those who risk prison to defy
The weaponry they all decry.
Young couples, schoolchildren, grandmothers,
Old hippies, punks with hair dyed green,
Staid-suited men who've never seen
Another demonstration, others
Who've been to scores, walk hand in hand
Toward the place where death is planned.