Big Sister, hair heaped like a fresh grave,
Turns in my arms as my arms turn,
Her fingers cool tubers against my skin
As we slide slide to the music, humming
An old tune, knee touching knee,
Step-two-three, step-two-three
Under a hard hatful of leaves,
The grass with its one good limb holding
The beat, a hint of impending form.
It gathers, it reaches back, it is caught up.
CHINA
China, the infernal newsreel,
feverishly drying the brain,
as faces mill towards the toppling palaces,
the flying rickshaw of solitude,
waves goodbye to the uniforms.
Long past the wheatfields,
a people of eyes
sends ageless lanterns to woo the moon.
And Ialone
carry the keys,
the bated knives.
Charles Wright
Joachim Neugroschel
