See the other side: stub fields.

Geese, ducks, and children

far off cries.

Down the river, tiny men

Walk a plank—maybe loading

little river boat.

Is that China

Flat, brown, and wide?

The ancestors

what did they leave us.

K’ung fu-tze, some buildings, remain.

—tons of soil gone.

Mountains turn desert.

Stone croppt flood, strippt hills,

The useless wandering river mouths,

Salt swamps

Silt on the floor of the sea.

Wind-borne glacial flour—

Ice-age of Europe,

Dust storms from Ordos to Finland

The loess of Yenan.

glaciers

“shrink

and vanish like summer clouds …”

CROSS THE SNOWY MOUNTAIN

WE SHALL SEE CHAIRMAN MAO!

The year the long march started I was four.

How long has this gone on.

Rivers to wade, mountains to cross—

Chas. Leong showed me how to hold my chopsticks

like the brush—

Upstairs a Chinese restaurant catty-corner

from the police

Portland, oregon, nineteen fifty-one,

Yakima Indian horseman, hair black as crows,

shovel shaped incisors,

epicanthíc fold.

Misty peaks and cliffs of the Columbia,

Old loggers vanish in the rocks.

They wouldn’t tote me rice and soy-sauce

cross the dam

“Snyder you gettin just like

a damned Chinaman.”

Gambling with the Wasco and the Wishram

By the river under Hee Hee Butte

& bought a hard round loaf of weird bread

From a bakery in a tent

In a camp of Tibetans

At Bodh-Gaya

Where Gautama used to stay.

On hearing Joan Baez singing “East Virginia”

Those were the days.

we strolld under blossoming cherries

ten acres of orchard

holding hands, kissing,

in the evening talkt Lenin and Marx.

You had just started out for Beijing.

I slippt my hand under her blouse

and undid her brassiere.

I passt my hand over her breasts

her sweet breath, it was too warm for May.

I thought how the whole world

my love, could love like this;

blossoms, the books, revolution

more trees, strong girls, clear springs;

You took Beijing

Chairman Mao, you should quit smoking.

Dont bother those philosophers

Build dams, plant trees,

dont kill flies by hand.

Marx was another westerner.

it’s all in the head.

You dont need the bomb.

stick to farming.

Write some poems. Swim the river.

those blue overalls are great.

Dont shoot me, let’s go drinking,

just

Wait.

FOR THE WEST

1

Europa,

your red-haired

hazel-eyed

Thracian girls

your beautiful thighs

everlasting damnations

and grave insouciance—

a woman’s country,

even your fat little popes.

groin’d temples

groov’d canals

—me too, I see thru

these green eyes—

the Cowboys and Indians all over Europe

sliding down snow fields on shields.

what next? a farmer’s

corner of the planet—

who cares if you are White?

2

this universe—“one turn”—turnd over.

gods of revolution.

sharp beards—fur flap hats—

kalmuck whip-swingers,

hugging and kissing

white and black,

men, men,

girls, girls,

wheat, rye, barley,

adding asses to donkeys

to fat-haunch horses,

it takes tractors and the

multiple firing of pistons

to make revolution.

still turning.       flywheel heavy