Table of
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All the Finite
All the finite agitates, and keeps agitating
Knowing their lives are short, they never
Stop moving, as if to the infinite, acting and
Reacting, as if to reach worldly immortality
Like Aristotle working on a new subject
Confucius hunting for a seat before a duke
Da Vinci and Su Dongpo busy writing and drawing
Every contemporary interneting when salmons
Are trying to swim back from far east seas, or
Crops growing hard in every field, even the earth
Itself keeps rotating around the sun. Yes
All that is living is agitating, never taking a break
As if struggling against one another for the first
Entry into the indefinite of time (or space)
To be measured in finite terms, except
The human mind alone, expanding indefinitely
Changming Yuan__
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Beloved Butterflies
You often imagine your soul
Transforming into a butterfly
That is, one of 20,000 species of
The kind, or 725 north of Mexico
As a butterfly, your soul can perform
The many deeds you can never hope to
For example, perch on a pink petal
Flap its wings against sunlight
Return to its cocoon to change its past
Or even travel back along the trail when
It was still an ugly caterpillar before it flies
Forward to the dawn of tomorrow
Although unable to fight with an bald eagle
Relocate a whole forest or, more
Modestly, bite off a thorny leaf, it can dance
With an angel for a whole night
Yes, you enjoy being that butterfly, taking
On a different shape with more colors
Changming Yuan__
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We, They
We, we come, we see, we conquer, while
They, they never seek territorial expansion
We eat meat with forks and knives
They chew grass at bamboo sticks
We believe in God and obey the law
They practice Confucianism and follow their superman
We discover nuclear energy to make great bombs
They invented gunpowder to celebrate festivals
We punch others with hard fists
They dance around us with taichi gestures
Our men fuck around everywhere outside our households
Their women lay babies right in our living rooms
We colonize every city with an English syntax
They decorate each street with Chinese signboards
We deploy aircraft carriers near their waters and coasts
They marry girls to our princes and paupers
We enjoy setting fires and blowing winds along their long walls
They have Chinese stomachs to digest all insults and injuries
We try every dirty way to overthrow their government
They sell every clean artifact to help our citizens survive
We borrow money from them to build more weapons
They toil to make more money for our banks
Them
Us
Changming Yuan__
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