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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 ...

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