joining myself to this place. Drinking,
aware that I, a citizen from the wealthiest,
squanderingest country, am taking precious water.
Unpurified tap water. Aware that I
risk my life, I throw in my lot
with the health of this common village. Sit
right down on the curbstone on the east
side of the square. Face the last of the sun.
Unpack notebook and pen. Write:
arrive
adobe
China
home
At home in a civilization kind with plazas,
containing me and the sky and a square of earth.
Father Sky
Mother Earth
It’s not only Native Americans who pray
Father Sky Mother Earth. Chinese
say Father Sky Mother Earth too.
In the almanac of stars, moons, luck, and farming:
Ba
T’ien
Ma
Day
Doff sneakers, doff socks, feel
the ground with naked soles. The floor of the plaza
is warm and smooth; skin meets skin.
Chinese generations walked
barefoot here, sweated, oiled,
spat upon, tamped the black soil,
which they could’ve planted, so rich. Now,
the farmers, men and women, homeward plod.
A goatherd following his goats and sheep,
a duckherd his ducks, light and long shadows
of many legs oscillating. They came upon
the writing man—poet!? retired philosopher!?—
in the act of public writing. Quietly,
they peered over his shoulders, peered over
his right (writing) hand, peered over
his other hand. By calligraphy, they can tell
character and fate. Readers jostled
one another for the spot directly in front,
looked at his writing upside down,
craned their necks to see it from his point
of view. English! The Brave Language. But
his Chinese! A boy’s Chinese.
The man draws like a boy. “Read, la.
Read, la-a.” Our not-so-ugly American
dared recite loudly, in his best language
and second-best language, the 4-word
poems. Audience clapped hands, and laughed,
and mimicked, and asked, “You’ve come from what
far place, aw?” “I was born in the Beautiful
Country.” “Aiya-a. Beautiful Country.
Is Beautiful Country truly beautiful and rich?”
“Well …” (Well, English, American.) “Beautiful
Country People are like me, not too
beautiful, not too ugly, not too
rich, not too poor. But some
too rich, too poor. Most,
my color skin, tan. Our color
skin.” Actually, the color skin of the people
around was darker, darker from working in the sun.
“I live in Big City. Eighty
out of one hundred people live in the cities.
But I am not like everybody.
Everybody has cars. 2 cars.
I don’t have one car.
I don’t want one car.”
Have and want, same sound, not
same tone. They pitied him, poor man,
no car. Audience grew, 50
souls hearing the sojourner who’d seen the Beautiful
Country, who’d learned to write their horizontal alphabet.
People vied with one another, please,
dear writer traveller teacher, come
to our home for rice, and stay the night.
A confident village, the people not shy
to bring you home and see their hovel.
He chose a solid-seeming man, mine
good host, and comradely put himself in yoke.
The farmers, washing up in public, showed off
the on-and-off faucets and the pipes. They filled
wood buckets and plastic buckets and jars.
Wittman asked for a carrying pole across
his neck, above his backpack, which steadied
and cushioned the bouncy, springy, sloshing, heavy
double load. Proudly, he sidestepped
through alleyways and around corners, and up and over
the raised threshold into the courtyard,
brought that water home where he would stay.
His host—Lai Lu Gaw,
Witt Man Gaw—shouted, “A good person
has come to visit us!” Out of the dark
of an open doorway appeared a woman. How
to describe Beauty? Perfection. Symmetry. Beyond
compare in all aspects—intelligence of gaze,
tallness of stature, star presence, gentilesse.
Not young, not old. Just right.
What a good man am I, able
to love looks so not-American. Bro
Lai Lu introduced her as Moy Moy.
Younger Sister. (Lower tone: Plum Plum.)
They’re not husband and wife. Father and daughter?
Brother bade brother, Come in,
la. Sit, la. Rest, la.
Home, la. The men sat on stools
at a low table. The woman brought tea;
she poured. With both hands, she
held the cup out to the guest, who
quickly accepted it with his 2 hands.
I am paying you my full attention.
The Communists and the Cultural Revolution have not
wiped out manners. Hosts and guest drank
without speaking. From the dark loft hung,
high and low, dried and drying plants,
tree branches, gourds with writing on them, clusters
of seeds, baskets. On the ground, the dirt floor,
all around were open jars and sealed
jars, bales, bundles, sheaves. We
are bowered in a nest. Smell: medicine herbs,
chrysanthemum, mustard, licorice, cilantro,
vinegar. The poor save everything, all
they make and grow, and so feel abundant.
Please don’t want to be like us. Don’t want.
Host as well as hostess carried from stove
and cooler, from pots and jars, dishes of brown
foods. A cauldron of white rice, enough
for meal after meal. The brown foods
tasted like jerked meat, sausage, brined
and sugared citrus and plums. Moy Moy
got up, and cooked afresh peas and choy,
greens of the new harvest. Back-home
Chinese, too, cook throughout
the dinner party, everybody in
the kitchen. The hostess began conversation:
“Are you married?” What answer but Yes?
“Yes. She’s not Chinese.” Too
small vocabulary, blurt it all. “She’s
white ghost woman. Her name, Taña,
means Play.” (Fawn. Lower tone: Food.)
“I married Play. Heh heh.
I married Food. She married me.
I am with her more years than I am without her.”
Hard to parley verb tenses. And impossible
to admit: Marry white, escape karma.
“How much money did you pay
for your airplane ticket?” She’s rude, bad
manners East and West to ask cost.
Truth-caring Wittman answered, “One
thousand dollars one-way.” Impossible
to explain redeeming coupons, miles, life
savings. “Waaah! One thousand dollars!?!
What do you do to make such money?”
“I write.” Impossible to explain the life
in theater. The moneymaking wife. “So,
how do you make your money?” “Farmer
peasants don’t make money, don’t
use cash.” They live as most human
beings have lived, directly on ground that gives
work and sustenance. “Mr. American Teacher,
will you marry me, and get me out
of the countryside?” “But I’m already married.
I have a wife and son.” “No matter.
No problem. Marry me, a Chinese
woman. Chinese women are beautiful,
kind, and good.” “I came but today to the country-
side, and do not want to leave it.”
The brother spoke up, “I want to
stay in the countryside too. I learned
the lesson Chairman Mao sent us down
to learn: The people who work the earth know
true good life.” “Where were you
sent down from?” “Shanghai City.”
The Shanghainese took the worst
punishment in the 10 Years of Great Calamity.
“We read. Both of us, readers. So sent
down, Moy Moy to Xinjiang,
I to another part of Xinjiang,
far far west, beyond Xizang,
almost beyond China. There are Uighur
Chinese, Muslim Chinese,
Xizang Chinese. The women—
they’re so free—whirl and twirl,
raise their arms to the sky. The music comes
from bagpipes. Pairs of women lift and
lower the grain pounder—bang bang bang bang—
a music too. Their religion has to do with
buffalos. They collect the skulls and long horns,
and put them on a wall or on the floor,
and that place changes to a holy place.
That area was made good. I felt
the good. I am able to know Good.”
So, what does Good feel like?
He could not say. Or he did say,
but in Chinese, and one’s Chinese
is not good enough to hear. “After
Great Calamity, after Xinjiang,
I went on the road. People are still
on the road, millions traveling like
desert people. But the desert people
go on roads they know for ten
thousand years. We seek work.
We seek justice.” Or restitution.
Or revenge. Come out even.
You know what he means, millions of homeless
wandering the country, displaced by dams, industrial
zones, the Olympics. “I wandered lost to many
villages until I came here and made up my mind
Stop. Here. My stay-put home.
I took for my own this empty house,
whose family left to work in Industrial Zone.
Many empty houses—you can have
any one you like.” “I want you
to take me to U.S.A.,”
said Moy Moy. “A Chinese farmer
is nothing. A maker of the mouse in an electric brain
factory—nothing.” The nightingale in the cage above
their heads sang along with the talking, and scattered
seeds and spattered water down upon the talkers
(and their food). A bare lightbulb hung next
to a wall, to be lit for emergencies and holidays.
In the dark, Moy Moy told
her failure: She’s never married.
“During the Great Calamity, women acted
married to one husband, and another husband,
and another. I had no one. No one
but this brother waiting for me at the agreed-upon
place.” Lai Lu told
his failure: “I have no children.”
Wittman told his failures: Not
staying with his wife till death us do part.
His son not married. Never getting
a play on Broadway, New York. Not
learning enough Chinese language.
(Marilyn Chin says, “The poet must read
classical Chinese. And hear Say Yup.”)
Midnight, Lai Lu stood, said,
“Ho, la. Good sleep, la.”
He left for some back room. Moy Moy
said, “Follow me.” Wittman followed her
out the front door. White stones
studded the courtyard walls;
a jewel-box up-poured stars into sky.
Followed the queue of black hair gleaming
in the black night, hied through alleys that turned,
and again turned, and again, 3 corners
in, and entered a home through an unlocked
door. “No one lives here.
You may live here.” She parted curtains.
The bed was a shelf, like a sleeper on Amtrak.
She backed into the cupboard, scooted, and sat.
Her pretty bare feet swung. He
sat beside her. “Heart Man, marry me.”
He ought to kiss her. But they don’t have
that custom, do they? He was a virgin for Mongolian
women. Aged, married too long,
the body refused to spring and pounce and feast,
to make the decision for sex. He reached for and held
her hands. “Moy Moy.” Oh, no,
shouldn’t’ve said her name. Can’t fuck
Younger Sister. “Thank you for wanting me
to marry you.” Her hands felt trusty. “Marry”
said, and “marry” heard many times tonight.
Taña appears. She’s sitting on the other side of him;
that’s her, warm pressing against him. He
could see her in the dark, her whitegold
hair, her expression; she’s interested, curious,
pissed off. He tapped her bare foot
with his bare foot. She’s solid.
A red string ties her ankle to
his ankle. No string connecting him and
the other woman. He spoke to the not-hallucinated
one. “You’re the most beautiful Chinese
woman I’ve ever met. I dearly want
to kissu, suck lips with you.”
Say anything; Taña doesn’t know
Chinese. “Thank you, you want to marry me.”
A rule of the open road: Keep thanking.
“However, I don’t want more marriage.
Our son, my one son doesn’t have any marriage.
No one. Will you marry him?” Wittman
dismayed and amazed himself. Forever, then.
Forever husband. Forever father. Never
lust after a woman again but wish her
for his lonely son. I wish for Mario
a life’s companion. “My son, Mario,
makes good money. He knows power
tools and car mechanics. He can cook.
He has some college. He is kind
and intelligent, and I want for him a kind
and intelligent person.” The old Chinese
customs aren’t so bad; fix him up
with a wife, a daughter-in-law of my own choosing.
Moy Moy’s holding of his hand became
a handshake. “Dui dui dui,”
she cooed. “We will agree on a place to meet.
He will be waiting for me there. Ho, la.
Good night, la. Good sleep, la-a-a.”
(You do not need vocabulary to understand
the Chinese. Just feel the emotion
in la-a-a and ahh and mo and aiya.)
Moy Moy left. Taña, also, left.
I am alone in the dark, so dark that
nothing exists but my thoughts, and thoughts
are nothing. Came all the way to China,
and failed to fuck another besides my long-
wedded spouse before I die.
The next thing,
dust was falling like ash, like glitter. Far
away, so faint, maybe imaginary, crowed
a rooster. Another, closer, rooster answered,
took up the opera, and another, and another,
each rooster louder, the loudest blaring
right outside the window. Wake up
in a village in China. Go use the community
toilet. Wash up in the town square,
brush teeth, swab down with the guys.
The women clean themselves indoors.
“Ho sun.” “Ho sun.” “Ho sun.”
“Ho sun.” Good morning. Good
body. Good belief. Good letter.
A happy civilization, glad to see
one and all, every morning. “Help me
farm rice?” asked Brother Lai Lu.
He took Wittman’s hand. 2 men
are walking China hand in hand. They walked
to the field for planting on this hopeful day.
They wrapped seedlings in cloth, settled the bundles
in baskets, tied baskets to waist, and waded
into the paddy. Oooh, the mud, the pleasureful
mud, my free and happy toes. You trace
in water a square, and at each corner embed
one rice plant. Oh, my hands
rooting and squishing silken luscious mud.
Look up: A line of rising and bending
people—kids too—are coming toward
our line. (The kids are all boys.
The girls have been adopted out to the most loving,
well-educated parents in the West. Chinese
girls will take over and improve America.)
Children, everybody growing mai.
Plant toward someone who’s planting toward you,
and make straight rows. Perfectly quiet,
we’re sighting and pacing one another, and organizing
the water into small and large rectangles, stitching
a silvery quilt over Mother Earth.
Every jade-green spikelet has its jade-
green water double. 2 infinite
blue skies. Slow white clouds
form, move and change, and wisp away.
Me, the one amid all of it taking
note. In the silence, critters peeping,
buzzing, chirping, humming, seem to be
my own mind idling and making it up—
but a frog jumps, a dragonfly zooms.
Tadpoles—schools of tadpoles—hurry by.
A mudsnail gliding and sliding. And me
planting rice, helping to feed a fifth
of the world’s people. All, all related.
This planting food together is heart
center. Hour after hour, eon after eon,
doing the same thing, plant, plant,
sink, loft, into water, into sky,
I am one of the human race that has always
done this work. Stay, let this life be
my whole life, and these people my people.
That other life, the one in America, the wife,