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AS I STEP OVER A PUDDLE AT THE END OF WINTER, I THINK OF AN ANCIENT CHINESE GOVERNOR And how can I, bom in evil days And fresh from failure, ask a kindness of Fate? —Written A.D. 819 Po Chu-i, balding old politician, What's the use? I think of you, Uneasily entering the gorges of the Yang-Tze, When you were being towed up the rapids Toward some political job or other In the city of Chungshou. You made it, I guess, By dark. But it is 1960, it is almost spring again, And the tall rocks of Minneapolis Build me my own black twilight Of bamboo ropes and waters. Where is Yuan Chen, the friend you loved? Where is the sea, that once solved the whole loneliness Of the Midwest? Where is Minneapolis? I can see nothing But the great terrible oak tree darkening with winter. Did you find the city of isolated men beyond mountains? Or have you been holding the end of a frayed rope For a thousand years? GOODBYE TO THE POETRY OF CALCIUM Dark cypresses— The world is uneasily happy: It will all be forgotten. —THEODOR STORM Mother of roots, you have not seeded The tall ashes of loneliness THE BRANCH WILL NOT BREAK III For me. Therefore, Now I go. If I knew the name, Your name, all trellises of vineyards and old fire Would quicken to shake terribly my Earth, mother of spiralling searches, terrible Fable of calcium, girl. I crept this afternoon In weeds once more, Casual, daydreaming you might not strike Me down. Mother of window sills and journeys, Hallower of scratching hands, The sight of my blind man makes me want to weep. Tiller of waves or whatever, woman or man, Mother of roots or father of diamonds, Look: I am nothing. I do not even have ashes to rub into my eyes. IN FEAR OF HARVESTS It has happened Before: nearby, The nostrils of slow horses Breathe evenly, And the brown bees drag their high garlands, Heavily, Toward hives of snow. THREE STANZAS FROM GOETHE That man standing there, who is he? His path lost in the thicket, Behind him the bushes Lash back together, The grass rises again, The waste devours him. Oh, who will heal the sufferings Of the man whose balm turned poison? 112 ...

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