Profiles from China | Page 6

has a new god.
As she paid ten coppers for him he is handsomely
painted and should be highly efficacious.
So there is rejoicing in the
house of Mrs. Sung.
Peking
Echoes
Crepuscule
Like the patter of rain on the crisp leaves of autumn
are the tiny footfalls of the fox-maidens.
Festival of the Dragon Boats
On the fifth day of the fifth month the statesman Küh
Yuen drowned himself in the river Mih-lo.
Since then twenty-three
centuries have passed, and the
mountains wear away.
Yet every year, on the fifth day of the fifth
month,
the great Dragon Boats, gay with flags and gongs,
search diligently in
the streams of the Empire
for the body of Küh Yuen.
Kang Yi
When Kang Yi had been long dead the Empress decreed
upon him posthumous decapitation, so that
he walks for ever
disgraced among the shades.
Poetics

While two ladies of the Imperial harem held before
him a screen of pink silk, and a P'in Concubine
knelt with his ink-slab,
Li Po, who was very
drunk, wrote an impassioned poem to the moon.
A Lament of Scarlet Cloud
O golden night, lit by the flame of seven stars, the
years have drunk you too.
The Son of Heaven
Like this frail and melancholy rain is the memory of
the Emperor Kuang-Hsü, and of his sufferings at
the hand of
Yehonala.
Yet under heaven was there found no one to avenge
him.
Now he has mounted the Dragon and has visited the
Nine Springs. His betrayer sits upon the Dragon
Throne.
Yet among the shades may he not take comfort from
the presence of his Pearl Concubine?
The Dream
When he had tasted in a dream of the Ten Courts of
Purgatory, Doctor Tsêng was humbled in spirit,
and passed his life in
piety among the foot-hills.
Fêng-Shui
At the Hour of the Horse avoid raising a roof-tree,
for by the trampling of his hoofs it may
be beaten down;
And at the

Hour of the cunning Rat go not near a
soothsayer, for by his cunning he may mislead
the oracle, and the
hopes of the enquirer come
to naught.
China
of
the
Tourists
Reflections in a Ricksha
This ricksha is more comfortable than some.
The springs are not
broken, and the seat is covered
with a white cloth.
Also the runner is young and sturdy, and his legs
flash
pleasantly.
I am not ill at ease.
The runner interests me.
Between the shafts he trots easily and
familiarly, lifting
his knees prettily and holding his shoulders
steady.
His hips are
lean and narrow as a filly's; his calves
might have posed for Praxiteles.
He is a modern, I perceive, for he
wears no queue.
Above a rounded neck rises a shock of hair the shade
of dusty coal. Each hair is stiff and erect as a
brush bristle. There are
lice in them no doubt--
but then perhaps we of the West are too
squeamish
in details of this minor sort.
What interests me chiefly is
the back of his ears. Not
that they are extraordinary as ears; it is their
very normality that
touches me. I find them
smaller than those of a horse, but
undoubtedly
near of kin.
There is no denying the truth of evolution;
Yet as a beast of burden

man is distinctly inferior.
It is odd.
At home I am a democrat. A republic, a true republic,
seems not improbable, a fighting dream.
Yet beholding the back of
the ears of a trotting man
I perceive it to be impossible--the millennium
another million years
away.
I grow insufferably superior and Anglo-Saxon.
I am sorry,
but what would you?
One is what one is.
Hankow
The Camels
Whence do you come, and whither make return, you
silent padding beasts?
Over the mountain passes; through the Great
Wall; to
Kalgan--and beyond, whither?...
Here in the city you are alien, even as I am alien.
Your sidling jaw,
your pendulous neck--incredible--and
that slow smile about your eyes and lip,
these are not of this land.

About you some far sense of mystery, some tawny
charm, hangs ever.
Silently, with the dignity of the desert, your
caravans
move among the hurrying hordes, remote and
slowly smiling.
But whence are you, and whither do you make return?
Over the
mountain passes; through the Great Wall; to
Kalgan--and beyond, whither?...

Peking
The Connoisseur: An American
He is not an old man, but he is lonely.
He who was born in the clash
of a western city dwells
here, in this silent courtyard, alone.
Seven servants he has, seven
men-servants. They
move about quietly and their slippered feet make
no sound. Behind
their almond eyes move green,
sidelong shadows, and their limber
hands are
never still.
In his house the riches of the Orient are
gathered.
Ivory he has, carved in a thousand quaint, enticing
shapes--pleasant to the hand, smooth with the
caressing of many
fingers.
And jade is there, dark green and milky white, with
amber from Korea and strange gems--beryl,
chrysoprase, jasper,
sardonyx....
His lacquered shelves hold priceless pottery--peachblow
and cinnabar and silver grey--pottery
glazed like the new moon, fired
how long ago
for a moon-pale princess