And how can I, born in evil days <br />And fresh from failure, ask a kindness of Fate? <br /> <br />-- Written A.D. 819 <br /> <br /> <br />Po Chu-i, balding old politician, <br />What's the use? <br />I think of you, <br />Uneasily entering the gorges of the Yang-Tze, <br />When you were being towed up the rapids <br />Toward some political job or other <br />In the city of Chungshou. <br />You made it, I guess, <br />By dark. <br /> <br />But it is 1960, it is almost spring again, <br />And the tall rocks of Minneapolis <br />Build me my own black twilight <br />Of bamboo ropes and waters. <br />Where is Yuan Chen, the friend you loved? <br />Where is the sea, that once solved the whole loneliness <br />Of the Midwest?Where is Minneapolis? I can see nothing <br />But the great terrible oak tree darkening with winter. <br />Did you find the city of isolated men beyond mountains? <br />Or have you been holding the end of a frayed rope <br />For a thousand years?<br /><br />James Arlington Wright<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/as-i-step-over-a-puddle-at-the-end-of-winter-i-t/
