Hi Colin another good read here with your interesting Chinese poems. About
the discussion on numbers, well I like the "eight hundred thousand" sounds
more impressive than if you had said a multitude or a large crowd but when
you think of 800, 000 in words, this would be over three quarters of a
million which sounds even more awesome for me. Sally J
>From: hui dewar <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: newsub/wedding
>Date: Fri, 23 Jul 2004 20:37:13 +0100
>
>* * = italics
>
>
>
> The Wedding
>
>Emma is the sweetest cousin. I'm glad
>she married at last and seems
>happy. The missed wedding's
>on DVD. Security lets me in
>to the gated block. You can see
>for miles from her flat,
>almost as far as the Yangtze
>while inside white leather sofas
>fold round a screen, broad as a car bonnet.
>
>Photographs of bride and groom
>flash forwards from childhood,
>cross paths like planets. Clothes change
>from revolutionary to Western
>when they're twenty. But the wedding's
>traditional. She wears auspicious red
>and the groom outside
>shows a red envelope as her friends
>question him, "How much is in it?"
>She takes a cup of green tea
>to each of her new parents.
>It's perfectly filmed. Not a wobble
>or a dropped shot of someone's feet
>or a child pressing one big, beady,
>out-of-focus eye against the screen.
>
>The view West is a park, big
>as the Gobi. Emma sees me scan it
>and we go. Once there, we pay to get in.
>No litter, graffiti or inauspicious thugs,
>just gardeners for a few jiao an hour
>the philosopher Sun zi in stone robes
>and a virtuous governor from the Qin.
>
>Emma slows half way but I don't mention
>the apple curve of her waist. Come September
>the park will be out of bounds.
>"Nice to see old things kept.
>at your wedding. Weren't they lost?
>How did you know what to do?"
>but she grins and says
>it was managed and the manager knew.
>
>*"Tradition's popular.but still,
>our hearts were in it. We love each other,
>after all", but she pauses,
>"My husband is away too much
>with work and is often drawn
>to the daughter from his first marriage.*
>
>"It's a lot to take on," I reply,
>and we continue round the park's hidden paths in silence
>till she says:
>
>*"You've been here before. You don't remember
>how it was. The old houses are gone,
>but the place where you and I walked
>is this spot - fond times - along
>streets so narrow and crowded
>that we went at a gentle pace,
>past doorways where people sat
>on summer evenings and spooned
>the flesh of melons. Generations
>in a single house. "Mellow"
>you'd said. Eight hundred thousand,
>my family with them, were moved
>to the suburbs, this ground flattened,
>grass unrolled like a carpet
>and these tall trees brought in,
>to be planted and watered
>where they stand now."*
>
>___________________________
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