[ P O E M ]
3'd day down Yangtze River, yesterday
passed vast mountain gorges and hairpin
river-bends, mist sun and cement factory
soft coal dust everywhere, all China
got a big allergic cold. Literary dele-
gation homebound after 3 weeks, now I'm
traveling separately like I used to — except
everywhere omnipresent kindly Chinese
Bureaucracy meets me at airports & boats
& takes me to tourist hotels & orders meals. I'm
trying to figure a way out — envious of 2
bearded hippies traveling 4th class in
steerage eating tangerines & bananas —
sleepers in passageways on mats, Chinese
voyagers playing checkers. Saw Beijing,
Great Wall, tombs & palaces, Suchow's
Tang gardens, Hangchow's West Lake walkway
dyke to hold the giant water in years of drought
built up by governors Tsu-Tung-Po and Po-Chu-I.
Saw Cold Mt. Temple w/ Snyder who'd
heard its bell echo across ocean.
— China, November 11, 1984
Published in: Big Scream, no. 20 (February 15, 1985), p. 4, November 11,1984
Now, here's a poet and his editor who know how to honor its small press.
Each poem in this book is individually notated and graced.
