through worlds,

Only begging, Mother,

must I be born again?

Snyder says: you bear me, nurse me

I meet you, always love you,

you dance

on my chest and thigh

Forever bom again.

THE OLD DUTCH WOMAN

The old dutch woman would spend half a day

Pacing the backyard where I lived

in a fixed-up shed,

What did she see.

Wet leaves, the rotten tilted-over

over-heavy heads

Of domesticated flowers.

I knew Indian Paintbrush

Thought nature meant mountains,

Snowfields, glaciers and cliffs,

White granite waves underfoot.

Heian ladies

Trained to the world of the garden,

poetry,

lovers slippt in with at night—

My Grandmother standing wordless

fifteen minutes

Between rows of loganberries,

clippers poised in her hand.

New leaves on the climbing rose

Planted last fall.

—tiny bugs eating the green—

Like once watching

mountaingoats:

Far over a valley

Half into the

shade of the headwall,

Pick their way over the snow.

NATURE       GREEN SHIT

The brittle hollow stalks of sunflower

heads broke over full of dusty seed

peeld, it tastes good, small

Why should dirt be dirty when you clean up.

stop to like the dead or dying plants,

twisted witherd grass

Picking the last peppers

Soft and wrinkld; bright green, cool

what a lump of red flesh I am!

Violet dawn sky—no more Arcturus—

beside the sugi nursery where we

pulld down vines

house lights constellations

still       on the hill.

Heavy frosted cabbage,

(all night porch bulb—)

paper boy squealing bike brakes

hey that’s my cat!

Coming home.

TO THE CHINESE COMRADES

The armies of China and Russia

Stand facing across a wide plain.

Krushchev on one side and Mao on the other,

Krushchev calls out

“Pay me the money you owe me!”

Mao laughs and laughs. long hair flops.

His face round and smooth.

The armies start marching—they meet—

Without clashing, they march through each other,

Lines between lines.

All the time Mao Tse-tung laughing.

He takes heaps of money.

He laughs and he gives it to Krushchev.

Chairman Mao’s belongings on the March:

“Two cotton and wool mixture blankets,

A sheet, two pants and jackets,

A sweater

A patched umbrella

An enamel mug for a rice bowl

A gray brief-case with nine pockets.”

Like Han-shan standing there

—a nibbing off some cliff

Hair sticking out smiling

maybe rolling a homegrown

Yenan cigarette Took a crack at politics

The world is all one.

—crawling out that hillside cave dirt house—

(whatever happened to Wong—

quit Chinese school, slugged his dad

left the laundry, went to sea

out the golden gate—did he make AB?—)

black eggshell-thin

pots of Lung-shan

maybe three thousand years B C

You have killed

I saw the Tibetans just down from the passes

Limping in high felt boots

Sweating in furs

Flatland heat.

and from Almora gazing at Trisul

the new maps from Peking

call it all China

clear down to here, & the Gangetic plain—

From the Hongkong N.T. on a pine rise