Fairly major undertaking here, Max, which I don't really feel qualified to
remark upon in any full sense. I like the opening piece with that admission
of both failure and addiction and the unrolling scroll conclusion.
Betweentimes would take more reading on a few levels.

Bill

On Wednesday, 16 March 2016, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> My Chinese Phase
> eighteen poems
>
> 1. Madly Singing - via Laptop
>
> No one’s without a failing;
> mine consists in writing verses.
>
> I’ve retired from my old life,
> ties to people, place and property -
>
> this weakness still remains behind.
> Each time I see a fine view, or garden,
>
> tree or flower, each time I encounter
> an engaging human being, or recall
>
> something curious from my past, I think:
> jot down the words for this, soon
>
> I’ll have another poem to show around.
> Reciting aloud and singing are not for me,
>
> vain though I’ve been of my poetry voice.
> It’s all on paper - and my laptop,
>
> from which I dream my poems can fly
> past the deaf hills and waters of Seattle.
>
> Dogs, squirrels, raccoons. birds hereabouts
> would startle should I sing them my poems
>
> all about them and their impact on me.
> Unlike Po Chu-i in Arthur Waley’s version,
>
> I still want to be heard and read by folk
> scattered round the world who once knew of me.
>
>
> 2. Li Ho
>
> Singsong girls! admire
> them - on pleasure barges
> floating in the night
>
> with lantern and zither
> where slow water flows
> through wide gorges.
>
> There Li Ho, in search
> of wilder muses than
> his tradition grants,
>
> senses in the sweet
> singsong girls’ grace
> refined wildness
>
> he may celebrate.
> Alas! he is poor. They
> are unaffordable.
>
> Knowing how they
> model their style
> on archaic images,
>
> cloud, river, rainbow,
> Li Ho contents
> himself with poems
>
> of Nature; readers
> know rainbows image
> woman’s ecstasy.
>
> Mountain goddess,
> your coat is fig leaves,
> your cloak is orchids;
>
> drawn by leopards,
> you lead lynxes;
> you gather upland
>
> perfumes - for whom?
> You entice a poet
> from his penmanship,
>
> his wife, their fenced garden,
> away to the risky hills
> where mists swirl in
>
> hiding his way back.
> Better stay down here
> where rain is gentle
>
> like girls assisting
> with the vegetables
> his family needs.
>
>
> 3. Three Travellers Cave
>
> Seeing off - parting from - sent to -
> so many Chinese poems
> start this way. Brothers, friends -
>
> partners, even. In Three Travellers Cave
> in eight-one-nine by Western count
> Pai Chu-yo, his brother Hsing-chien
>
> with their friend Yuan Chen here
> paused. Pai’s poems of separation
> made it famous ever since.
>
> ‘Forever suffering apart’!
> ‘I only care that never
> again we separate.’
>
> ‘The rivers of our souls’,
> wrote Pai to Yuan,
> ‘spring from the same well.'
>
> Along the cliff, visitors clutch
> the iron chain locked to which
> thousands of padlocks
>
> speak their fervent wish -
> ‘forever locked together’.
> Carved inscriptions cover all walls.
>
> Three statues now greet
> visitors. Stone tablets by the dozen
> lean their ancient wishes everywhere.
>
> Pai’s poems spoke for everyone.
> Finding friends gone means pain.
> Best not travel there alone.
>
>
> 4. His Lyre
>
> There should be a small boy
> walking behind me carrying
> in its waterproof cover
> my lyre - its several strings
>
> will have made my lyrics
> when last I shared them
> more melodious
> and got us invited
>
> to perform elsewhere.
> You moderns think
> a lyre mere symbol -
> this one’s intrinsic,
>
> yesterday today
> tomorrow wherever
> tradition’s respected,
> keeping our classics ours.
>
>
> 5. He Thanks His Host
>
> All week it’s been
> a waning moon
> as we emptied
> your wine-cups.
>
> The third cup
> ushered me through
> into greatness,
> with the fourth
>
> I dissolved into
> Nature altogether!
> drinking further
> we all flew far.
>
> Unsteadily now
> we renew our thanks
> and turn unsteadily
> each to his bed.
>
> By the time that moon
> returns from the dark
> a sober sliver nightly
> waxing towards fulness
>
> I shall be elsewhere
> looking up thanking that moon,
> and you my host, for our talk,
> and your generous wine.
>
>
> 6. Connect Art to Life
>
> Thanks to the Getty
> and its munificence
> the Asian Art Museum
> up the road in the park
>
> where I walk my dog
> thus missing the art,
> now makes its collection
> visitable online! free!!
>
> SAM connects art to life!
> (The S stands for Seattle.
> The hilltop building stands
> behind two cement camels.)
>
> ‘High-quality images,
> line-by-line transcriptions,
> searchable seals,
> zoom and deep zoom!
>
> Browse by artist,
> dynasty, region
> and more’ - here the
> cute flyer expires
>
> breathless and blank.
> But its other side -
> Buffalo and Herder Boy,
> 12th century, ink,
>
> color and silk -
> calls to me: Visit,
> search real walls
> with naked eye,
>
> only then retire here
> to my lonely screen
> for experience
> merely ‘virtual’.
>
> Well, I herd my dog past
> often enough without
> connecting art to 21st
> century life. Too late
>
> for me, calligraphy?
> Shall I just key in now
> The Online Catalogue
> and zoom and deep zoom?
>
>
> 7. Tu Fu and his Times
>
> Before at last being known -
> remembered since - as Ministry
> of Works Tu, our Tu Fu
> failed the civil service exam!
>
> Was it his experimental prose -
> so young? Was it prejudice
> from the then prime minister
> who failed them all that other year
>
> to spite the emperor? Likely.
> His later posting may merely
> have been a sinecure, they say.
> Once a bureaucrat, you write,
>
> however poetically,
> as partaking of public life,
> the Tao of government -
> or recreation for officials.
>
> Emperors and prime ministers,
> many of them, wrote poems.
> Your enemy might respect them,
> the pity of war unite them.
>
> The ghosts of those by blood defiled
> are homeless. No one has gathered
> the white bones on the Black Lake’s shore.
> Where new ghosts cry, old ones are bitter.
>
>
> 8. Butterfly Dream
>
> Chuang Chou dreamed
> he was a butterfly;
> waking, wondered now
> was he a butterfly
> dreaming he was
> Chuang Chou wondering.
>
>
> 9. In Class
>
> Beware the praise of schoolmasters -
> such was the fate of Tu Fu, beware
> perhaps the poem inflicted in class,
>
> however good one’s later years
> may find it, however wise to
> the good and bad in life which
>
> the young have yet to meet.
> In the long run, Tu Fu survives,
> in the short - beware schoolmasters.
>
> It’s the same for Shakespeare - I
> was once a teacher, not of how
> to praise falsely, I claim, but
>
> showing ‘How to Read’ - partly as
> taught me, part discovered - letting
> his lines sink in, radiate, connect.
>
>
> 10. Thanks to the Bureau
>
> Emperor Wu (Han Dynasty)
> has sent officials from his Bureau
> of Music to bring in ‘folk-songs’
> from his far-spread peoples.
>
> Thus he may know what
> is their mind, their needs
> and aspirations, the easier
> to be managed, governed.
>
> No matter they are metrically
> imperfect. At the palace now
> scholars are making regular
> ‘folk-songs’ all approve.
>
> (In these fractious times
> even a scholar, falling out
> with the anxious Emperor,
> may meet his executioner
>
> or, sentence commuted,
> have all his hair pulled out.
> Rather exile to a province
> giving him sad poems to write.
>
> Best to serve and prosper
> like Ts’ao P’ei, promoted Great
> Officer of Brilliant Favour,
> though not for his songs.
>
> The poetry books collected
> for Emperor Chienwen
> are stacked with his own poems,
> his father’s and family’s.
>
> Percussion, bells, wind
> instruments may accompany
> these songs. Others are chanted
> to lyres or zithers.
>
> Our painters delight,
> with pen and colour,
> silken scrolls and paper,
> scrolled and unscrolled,
>
> to show our scholars
> holding cups of wine
> under winter trees
> by a lake or waterfall,
>
> reciting to the moon.
> Not much needs saying, much
> may be reflected. Chilling
> moonlight on rippling waters.
>
>
> 11. A Merchant’s Dream of Power
>
> An upstart merchant fancied himself
> chief minister, nay emperor!
> intrigued, and strutted about loudmouthed.
>
> When I’m in charge, he said, our border
> will have a Great Wall built, to keep
> out barbarian invaders.
>
> Those already here disguised
> as citizens my men will bustle away.
> Away with their wives and children!
>
> They take our jobs and wreck our schools
> and never seem to learn Chinese.
> My China has no room for mosques.
>
> My soldiers will be trained how best
> to torture suspect enemies and
> prisoners; my bombers will unload
>
> our state-of-the-art bombs on our
> enemies’ hideaways - we know where
> they are, disguised as hospitals.
>
> Foreign devils will now trade with us,
> on our terms. Losers - the idle poor
> sick of China - are multiplying:
>
> sweep away benefits and supporters.
> China’s greatness comes from its merchants;
> I will give them scope to make us great.
>
>
> 12. Mad Wind
>
> These winter weeks, our soils
> have been soaked, saturated,
> softened round the roots of trees.
> Soon they’ll be toppled, please
>
> not against power lines!
> Watch out for downed ones -
> they may be ‘energized’.
> Well, we bunkered down,
>
> sallying forth next day
> well wrapped up, beret
> firmly down to my ears -
> but not swept away.
>
> Nor the trees I feared for.
> Elsewhere, maybe. Look
> out for reports and more
> forecasts for where storms lurk.
>
> Frail boats are out on the lake
> as if reassured, trusting
> such winds now promised
> will thrill but not sink them.
>
> Were we young again, wouldn’t you
> and I be down there involved so!
> Pour me a glass of red wine
> by the weather-watch window.
>
>
> 13. Sent Far to Alan Roddick
>
> We meet so seldom! It was always the way,
> even that brief time we lived in the same town
>
> before I tried Scotland then Australia. Not that
> when briefly together we quaffed wine
>
> in quantity like the old poets of old China
> whom (mutatis mutandis) we now resemble.
>
> In our prime we clambered together up
> Hanging Rock on our way to Ballarat,
>
> both sensing its aura, making sure
> neither vanished in its cloven atmosphere.
>
> To send you a poem newly drafted,
> and hear back quickly not just you liked it,
>
> but see (tactful) how to improve it
> or just correct some simple slip! -
>
> that’s been a pleasure all these years.
> And hasn’t email made a difference!
>
> In the U.S. a while, the distance I sense between
> Seattle and Dunedin feels no more nor less.
>
> Your moves have been strenuous enough,
> up and down both poetic islands
>
> North! South! of our shared New Zealand,
> home-making, profession-following,
>
> family-manning, retiring to work,
> poems again, written and published.
>
> Decades after the event I hear you fished
> ‘my’ Hutt River! - dusk over the water.
>
> Boyhood not far from Seamus Heaney’s! -
> your accents sweet part of your elegy for him.
>
> Now we exchange bad news about English:
> the decay of grammar, ugly idioms.
>
> Some fresh ones - the mouth-feel of Yiddish
> enriching American - and our - English.
>
> Drink to that! you in bungalow Dunedin,
> me at my laptop in our Seattle flat.
>
>
> 14. Old Poet’s Advice to the Old
>
> Walk out daily briskly,
> even if slowly back.
> Keep your eyes peeled
> for those who smile,
>
> whether or not you
> manage to smile back.
> Watch the skies, their
> changing expressions,
>
> for fear, as mother
> used often to say,
> you ‘catch your death’
> from sudden downpour.
>
> Wear a hat against
> both sun and wet
> and a non-slip boot
> on each old foot.
>
> Watch, when your feet
> stumble, but don’t
> (let’s hope) quite fall -
> underfoot may be
>
> where freshest green
> and blossom teem,
> fragrant as thyme
> or camomile. Smile.
>
> Drink and be merry.
> Tomorrow may be dry.
> Remember yesterday,
> savour Memory.
>
> When asked: 'How was
> your weekend?’, have
> ready some answer your
> questioner can admire.
>
> He or she well may
> be old like us one day
> (if lucky!), waking
> in pain to a surprised
>
> face in the unfair
> truthful mirror:
> ‘now I look like that
> old man - I bet
>
> he learned to avoid
> mirrors! My turn now,
> bring out the floppy hat,
> hide the wrinkled brow,
>
> accept being unsteady
> and painfully slow.
> This journey must end -
> the further the better -
> try every detour whatever.
>
>
> 15. Broken
>
> Broken the moon of March -
> soon mended. Springtime,
> soon done. Myself, past
> mending - when quite done?
>
> No knowing, no saying.
> Earth still has room for me,
> above ground, I mean, after
> which I’ve made no plan.
>
> I still have eyes for moon,
> cherry blossom groves
> a stiff walk away
> that still need watching,
>
> for the young, the smiling;
> ears for their voices.
> Aren’t I lucky?
> Expensive vices
>
> have lost their hold
> on me, music now
> comes cheaply though
> canned. I’ve told
>
> my wife what to pipe
> into the chapel for
> my last farewell:
> some oboe solo.
>
> She may not be there.
> No predicting where.
> Why bother your head?
> Let the dead, etcetera.
>
>
> 16. Inspiring Horses
>
> Chih Tun, fourth-century
> Buddhist monk, well-known
> for his expensive pastime -
>
> kept a stable stocked
> with splendid horses!
> When you asked, is this
>
> quite suitable for one
> in these pious robes?
> Yes, came his response,
>
> my horses inspire me
> with what I can only
> call their spirituality:
>
> courage, beauty,
> profundity,
> pride and purity -
>
> mounting an emblem
> of divinity,
> I feel I'm galloping
> past death to eternity.
>
> What did he die of?
> Wish I could tell you.
> The perfect man (for him)
>
> rides upon the truth
> of heaven, soars aloft,
> free in infinity.
>
>
> 17. Discipline
>
> Famous for his huge armies -
> a million or more men,
> Ts’ao Ts’ao enforced on them
>
> the strictest discipline -
> by example. For letting
> his horse stray in standing
>
> crops, he condemned himself
> to death - a sentence which
> he was persuaded to commute.
>
>
> 18. Scroll
>
> To write a painting -
> paper, ink, brush -
> that’s the style -
>
> one that writes scrolls,
> vertical if for the wall;
> for table, horizontal.
>
> Writes - not shapes and looks
> but - meanings. Silk, colour,
> brush - allow to dry, scroll,
>
> vertical if for the wall;
> for table, horizontal.
> Meanings in beholders’
>
> minds blossoming
> invisibly; eyes lead down
> or along the scroll.
>
> What look like looks
> and shapes - do they
> prompt in you, beholder,
>
> meanings blossoming
> along your mind’s
> unrolling scroll?
>
> Afters:
> 1. Madly Singing - via Laptop
> After Bai Juyi, 772-846,
> Arthur Waley’s Po Chu-i.
> 2. Li Ho
> 8th century; after Gary Snyder,
> A Place in Space, p.88.
> 3. Three Travellers Cave
> After Bill Porter (‘Red Pine’), Finding Them Gone:
> Visiting China’s Poets of the Past - Po is now Pai.
> 6. Connect Art to Life
>
> http://www1.seattleartmuseum.org/eMuseum/code/emuseum.asp?emu_action=collection&collection=27526&collectionname=WEB%3AAsian&currentrecord=1&moduleid=1&module=
> 7. Tu Fu and his Times
> After Arthur Cooper, Li Po and Tu Fu.
> 8. Butterfly Dream
> After Arthur Cooper, Li Po and Tu Fu, p.36.
> 10. Thanks to the Bureau
> After Arthur Cooper, Li Po and Tu Fu;
> and Anne Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace.
> 15. Broken
> After Arthur Cooper, Li Po and Tu Fu, p.200.
> 16. Inspiring Horses
> After Arthur Cooper, Li Po and Tu Fu, pp.209-12.
> Livia Knaul, Journal of Chinese Philosophy, Vol.13 (1986), p.411-428
> 17. Discipline
> After Arthur Cooper, Li Po and Tu Fu, p.214.
> 18.Scroll
> After Simon Leys, The Hall of Uselessness, p.337.