Poetry

After his friends
rigged a pulley
and lowered the pack

With nothing but time
and the light of the Singer,
and no one to come now forever

It’s not new, this condition, just for awhile
kept deep
in the cortex of things imagined

Long I had heard of Lake Tung-t’ing 
And now at last I have climbed the tower.
Wu is to the east, and Chu to the south,

I never shall know
while I live, what it meant. . . .