china poems

chinese influences

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“The Strong Are Without Ambition” –Lao Tzu

Something was moving in China
on a mountain road, and I stopped
the van and got out to snap
pictures of it lumbering my way,
a water buffalo.

I kneeled like a bull fighter
as he swayingly came—saw
the splayed, shaggy hooves,
the muddy eyes, the wide
bend of horns that between them
swaying held up the whole
mountain’s silence.
I saw the antique power
in thighs moving centuries
at the same pace on roads,
in swamps, or knee-keep
sucking mud of rice paddies;
the power in dark shoulders—
the quietness in strength
that does not have to insist,
but is.

I watched him until, veering
from the road he stepped over the
edge beneath the stick of his
driver and was gone.

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