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Tao-Yun Meets Sandy Berrigan

Author: 
Lee Harwood

A wall hung with charms -

pictures, a Welsh love-spoon, beads

“for worrys”

 

I live with this

the touchstones, rituals, to hold off or hold to...

Clinging to the walls?

 

A soft hot night, and May

now, a half moon so clear

in the dark sky

 

All round the globe

Like Chinese poems of dear friends’ separations,

brief meetings, then parting again

 

Shifts and changes

that can’t be charmed away

only soothed by this “hollow”

 

I remember the taste of coffee

as late at night I entered a room

where you lay sleeping

 

The Yellow Crane No 10 (Summer 1997)

“Taoyun (c400 AD), (poet and) wife of General Wang Nin-chih. The general was so stupid that she finally deserted him.” Arthur Waley, 170 Chinese Poems.