Chinese Scrolls
Poems from old and yellowed
Chinese scrolls make me sad,
make me sad: stored in shiny,
lacquered boxes of perfumed teak,
they crumble when unrolled.
And the hands that must have written
Chinese thoughts upon the rolls:
little, leathern, patient hands,
painting poems -- stroke and stroke
and careful, delicate stroke --
stopping, meanwhile, to twirl
a waxed moustache --
for someone else, a foreigner,
who cannot understand, to read,
mull over, and be sad.
And this when Chinese thoughts
are gone, and tiny, trembling
Chinese hands are dust.
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Submitted on May 02, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 26 sec read
- 0 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | AABCADEFGGHIJAAKLA |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 524 |
Words | 89 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 18 |
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"Chinese Scrolls" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 10 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/68032/chinese-scrolls>.
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