Tag Archives: Chinese Poetry

                    How comes it that he wrote a book
                    of five thousand words?
                               translated by Arthur Waley (“Po Chü-I on Lao-tzü”)

“Let them talk,” old Tom Davis said,
“to see what they don’t know.”
has worked well-enough for me—

yet I write incessantly: lay bare
my innocence and ignorance
on recyclable paper no cowmen

dare read. Out here, the approach
to good or bad speaks for itself,
and is remembered—but in between,

the indomitable art on the wing
is humbling and leaves us speechless.
Already, I have said too much.

“Po Chü-I on Lao-tzü”