Chinese Scrolls

Poems from old and yellowed Chinese scrolls make me sad, make me sad: stored in shiny, lacquered boxes of perfumed teak, they crumble when unrolled. And the hands that must have written Chinese thoughts upon the rolls: little, leathern, patient hands, painting poems -- stroke and stroke and careful, delicate stroke -- stopping, meanwhile, to twirl a waxed mustache -- for someone else, a foreigner, who cannot understand, to read, mull over, and be sad. And this when Chinese thoughts are gone, and tiny, trembling Chinese hands are dust.