Daniel Halpern

There are fewer introductions In plague years, Hands held back, jocularity No longer bellicose, Even among men. Breathing’s generally wary, Labored, as they say, when The end is at hand. But this is the everyday intake Of   the imperceptible life force, Willed now, slow — Well, just cautious In inhabited air. As for ongoing dialogue, No longer an exuberant plosive To make a point, But a new squirreling of air space, A new sense of   boundary. Genghis Khan said the hand Is the first thing one man gives To another. Not in this war. A gesture of   limited distance Now suffices, a nod, A minor smile or a hand Slightly raised, Not in search of   its counterpart, Just a warning within The acknowledgment to stand back. Each beautiful stranger a barbarian Breathing on the other side of the gate.

According to Lin Yutang, both Po Chuyi and Su Tungpo "desperately admired" Tao Yuanming, a poet of nature who wrote a single love poem, a poem thought by Chinese dilettantes to be the one "blemish in a white jade." Can a poet be faulted for calling a woman carelessly perfect in beauty ? He chose to long for her by envying the candle that glowed upon her beautiful face, the shadow that followed in her every move. Yet the nature poet Tao Yuanming, at home with the sudden turning of seasons, now feared the shadow in darkness, a discarded fan that once stirred her hair, feared the candle at dawn. At last believed that for beauty he had lived in vain.