To Wang Xizhi
The future generations will look upon us,
just like we look upon our past.
How sad!
—Wang Xizhi, “Orchid Pavilion Preface”
Wang Xizhi, today I saw a mountain spilling over with ink.
The pines were brushes enough to catch it all,
And paint the sky a wash of gray light, nascent snow-storm,
Leaving my thoughts silent,
For a moment transcendent.
Laoshi Wang, tonight I drink to you, old man.
I have no cohort of drunken poets surrounding me
Along the lantern-lit waters of a winding stream,
No brothers to force another cup and a brush upon me,
So tonight I write to you, old man.
My China is much different from your China, old man,
And not so different at all. Today I walked a wall
Born long before you—and felt a familiar shiver,
That of history claiming me as her own.
I am Zheng He, wandering lonesome oceans
In search of my divine treasure. I am Du Fu,
Expectorated from service to empire and dreaming
Of thatched cottage and flowers blooming on Chengdu.
I am the silent unspooling generations
Of slaves and peasants, unable to conceive
Of life away from the banks of their birth rivers.
In me, tanks crush my brothers’ bones
While the world watches, bored. In me,
Dragons are born and phoenixes die. In me,
Why is a brief surgeons’ knife and a holy sacrifice.
Wang Xizhi, follow me stumbling off now into the night.
Listen to my song, old man, and immortalize it
So I can recall it in the daylight,
And remember in the coming years
The sinking moon of my youth.
Beijing, 2005 / Maine 2026
Image: Winding Stream at Lanting, Yamamoto Jakurin (1790)