Celebrating a Chinese poet

 

“TO LIVE IS TO SHOUT AT THE SKY”

(With apologies to Nianxi Chen, whose title I have appropriated)

 

I woke because I had heard my name

Muttered in the lyrics to “Diamonds and Rust.”

I’d fallen asleep over an article about

A Chinese miner, an explosives worker, who

Had also been a poet. Waking, I sat, a dog

Curled against my haunch, my customary

Middle aged position, the middle finger

Of my right hand holding closed my right eye.

The second knuckle curled against the lid, thought-

Lessly, holding down a broken window shade

That keeps flapping up.