After Reading Tu Fu, I Emerge from a Cloud of Falseness

wearing a suit of light.

 

It’s too easy to be

 

strange. I glow

 

reading a few pages

 

of an ancient Chinese poet

 

to calm me, but soon

 

I am traveling down

 

terrible roads

 

like an insect chased

 

by golden armies.

 

Then I am tired in a little boat

 

filling with smoke.

 

Then in the seasonably

 

cold morning I am

 

once again missing my friends.

 

Some have been sent

 

to the capital to take

 

their exams or work for a while

 

or be slowly executed. I

 

cannot help them, I am trying

 

to build a straw hut

 

beside the transparent river.

 

The sky is a perfect

 

black dome, with stars

 

that look white but

 

are actually slightly blue.

 

I have two precious candles

 

to last me a night

 

that has suddenly come.

 

I feel the lives of cities

 

drift through me,

 

I am a beautiful scroll

 

on which the history

 

of a dynasty has been written

 

in a dead language

 

not even one lonely scholar knows.

 

I see sad crushed plastic

 

everywhere and put

 

some thoughts composed

 

of words that do not

 

belong together

 

together and feel

 

a little digital hope.

Matthew Zapruder
“After Reading Tu Fu, I Emerge from a Cloud of Falseness” first appeared in Bat City Review, Spring 2008.