For the joy that's in it, as the fella says, and to combat the tedium of all
that prose, let me dump on any of you still following this thread the few
others I've done from this sequence, the latest just today:
4
Blood-sweating
horses breed
in the extreme west,
from times past memory
their drovers
herd them east.
When spring and fall
drive hard
without remission
how then can wealth
or rank
resist?
Clear dews glaze
the orchids
in the marsh,
white hoar-frosts seize
the level
plains.
In the morning
youth
is soft,
late at evening
age
is hard.
We hold
in perpetuity
no grace.
5
That distant time
when I
was young
and laughed
and danced
and sang,
I wandered west
where the lights
burned bright
and mixed
in high
society.
But before the party ended
the bright sun went.
I spurred
my horse
towards home again,
inventorized
spent
years:
gold spilled
like sand
for junkyard goods;
steered north then
to the great
trunk road.
From this long
labyrinth
what out?
61
As a boy
I grasped the sword
and easily outfenced
my masters;
clean strokes
sliced the clouds
till skill
bred notoriety:
my sword chopped
at the desert edge,
my horses drank
peripheral chaos;
banners whipping
the wind
joined gong and drum,
my only music.
War is a sheer affliction,
furious and sad;
boyhood
bitter.
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