Poetry

Tailing Dam stands tall, Mine Lake hangs high.
At dike’s end stand a few grasses, snake-like.

Something in a locomotive, that black-clad traffic’s rush,
            something in the silver-tinted background: always
that tally of progress & catastrophe, engines wrecked

After his friends
rigged a pulley
and lowered the pack

It’s not new, this condition, just for awhile
kept deep
in the cortex of things imagined

Long I had heard of Lake Tung-t’ing 
And now at last I have climbed the tower.
Wu is to the east, and Chu to the south,

Snow whitens mountains westward and the forts of three cities,
Waters from the southern lakes flash on miles of bridge;
Wind and dust from sea to sea shut me from my brothers;