Profiles from China | Page 7

zoo.?And yet the ordinance is clear: "Four armed guards,
strong metal grills behind the bridge, the engine-room?enclosed--in case of piracy."
The socks of the sentry are green.?Up and down, up and down he paces, between the
bridge and the first of the life-boats.?In my deck chair I grow restless.
Am I then so far removed from life, so wrapped in
cotton wool, so deep-sunk in the soft lap of civilization, that I cannot feel the cold splash of truth??It is a disquieting thought--for certainly piracy seems
as fantastic as ever.
The socks of the sentry annoy me. They are too
green for so hot a day.?And his shoes squeak.?I should feel much cooler if he wouldn't pace so.?Piracy!
Somewhere on the River
The Altar of Heaven
Beneath the leaning, rain-washed sky this great white
circle--beautiful!
In three white terraces the circle lies, piled one on
one toward Heaven. And on each terrace the?white balustrade climbs in aspiring marble, etched?in cloud.?And Heaven is very near.?For this is worship native as the air, wide as the
wind, and poignant as the rain,?Pure aspiration, the eternal dream.
Beneath the leaning sky this great white circle!
Peking
The Chair Ride
The coolies lift and strain;?My chair creaks rhythmically.?It is not yet morning and the live darkness pushes
about us, a greedy darkness that has swallowed?even the stars.?In all the world there is left only my chair, with the
tiny horn lantern before it.?There are also, it is true, the undersides of trees in
the lantern-light and the stony path that flows?past ceaselessly.?But these things flit and change.?Only I and the chair and the darkness are permanent.
We have been moving so since time was in the?womb.
The seat of my chair is of wicker.?It is not unlike an invalid chair, and I, in it, am swaddled
like an invalid, wrapped in layer on layer?of coddling wool.?But there are no wheels to my chair. I ride on the
steady feet of four queued coolies.?The tramp of their lifted shoes is the rhythm of being,
throbbing in me as my own heart throbs.
Save for their feet the bearers are silent. They move
softly through the live darkness. But now and?again I am shifted skilfully from one shoulder to?the other.
The breath of the coolies is short.?They strain, and in spite of the cold I know they are
sweating.?It is wicked of course!?My five dollars ought not to buy life.?But it is all they understand;?And even I am not precisely comfortable.
The darkness is thinning a little.?On either side loom featureless black hills, their summits
sharp and ragged.?The Great Wall is somewhere hereabouts.
My chair creaks rhythmically.?In another year it will be day.
Ching-lung-chiao
The Sikh Policeman: A British Subject
Of what, I wonder, are you thinking??It is something beyond my world I know, something
that I cannot guess.?Yet I wonder.
Of nothing Chinese can you be thinking, for you hate
them with an automatic hatred--the hatred of?the well-fed for the starved, of the warlike for?the weak.?When they cross you, you kick them, viciously, with
the drawing back of your silken beard, your?black, black beard, from your white teeth.?With a snarl you kick them, sputtering curses in short
gutturals.?You do not even speak their tongue, so it cannot be
of them you are thinking.
Yet neither do you speak the tongue of the master
whom you serve.?No more do you know of us the "Masters" than you
know of them the "dogs."?We are above you, they below.?And between us you stand, guarding the street, erect
and splendid, lithe and male. Your scarlet turban?frames your neat black head,?And you are thinking.
Or are you??Perhaps we only are stung with thought.?I wonder.
Shanghai
The Lady of Easy Virtue: An American
Lotus,?So they called your name.?Yet the green swelling pod, the fruit-like seeds and
heavy flower, are nothing like to you.?Rather, like a pitcher plant you are, for hope and all
young wings are drowned in you.
Your slim body, here in the caf��, moves brightly in
and out. Green satin, and a dance, white wine?and gleaming laughter, with two nodding earrings--these are Lotus.?And in the painted eyes cold steel, and on the lips a
vulgar jest;?Hands that fly ever to the coat lapels, familiar to
the wrists and to the hair of men. These too?are Lotus.?And what more--God knows!
You too perhaps were stranded here, like these poor
homesick boys, in this great catch-all where the?white race ends, this grim Shanghai that like a?sieve hangs over filth and loneliness.?You were caught here like these, and who could live,
young and so slender--in Shanghai??Green satin, and a gleaming throat, and painted eyes
of steel,?Hunter or hunted,?Peace be with you,?Lotus!
Shanghai
In the Mixed Court: Shanghai
Two men sit in judgment on their fellows.?Side by side they sit, raised on the pedestal of the law,
at grips with squalor and ignorance.?They are civilization--and they are very grave.
One of them is of my own people, a small man, definite,
hard-featured, an accurate weapon of small?calibre.?Of the other I cannot judge.?He is heavily built, and when he is still the dignity of
the Orient is about him like his robe. His head?is large and beautifully domed, his hands tapering?and