*indicates beginning and end of italics.
----- Original Message -----
From: "hui dewar" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, July 15, 2004 9:31 PM
Subject: newsub/curtain
> I don't know if the italics will come through on this - let's try.\\
>
>
>
>
> Bamboo curtain (=Title of poem)
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>
> "You're fit at sixty", I shout
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> as Uncle and Aunt
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> disappear uphill
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> through the bamboo forest.
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>
>
> *"That's from Xinjiang",*
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> Uncle laughs as I catch up.
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>
>
> *We were shepherds in the Tienshan mountains
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> for thirty years - our punishment.
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> I'd said what I thought at the time
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> and my wife was from a rich family.*
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>
>
> All day we have no view.
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> Bamboo on either side
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> thins to a thicket of oak
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> at altitude.
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>
>
> On the way down
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> Aunt holds my daughter's hand
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> and with her stick plumbs
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> the green pipes for sound.
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>
>
> Then hazy valleys converge
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> and bamboo breaks
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> for tea and winter greens.
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>
>
> At home, Uncle insists,
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>
>
> *"You should go to Xinjiang.
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> You'd love it there: blue sky,
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> mountains, snow for months at a stretch."*
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>
>
> "And the Uigers?" I enquire,
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> but Aunt cuts in with lowered eyes,
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>
>
>* "You are a young man
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> and you're very interested in politics.
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> Have some more of the seven- treasure cake."*
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>
>
> __________________________________
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>
>
>
>
> Colin
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