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Until the steepest sequence I had ever tried Wore me round and, stooped, I hauled myself Higher, at last inside the tower, At Eagle Flying Belly Up. The obvious analogy -- the Wall as dragon, Serpentine -- echoed mutely far below, In my vase and teacups packed away, The cloisonné a distillation, silk-fine, Of these hills, the red metal mined and energized, The dotting of the dragon's eyes With daubs of paint-alive. And I as well-alive and new, A grain of time daubed on the snaking stone, Changed in the course of this climb From one who had believed to one who knew. We all gaze from our distance, after all, At the imagined forms that writhe as real 
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Until, once we are on the ground, they harden fast -- Mist vanishes to vista, paste fires to enamel. And though I eagle on the dragon Wall, There is too much to see. My two weeks insult China -- Its Forbidden City,Tombs, Dingshu, Dazu, the Summer Palace, Buddha of Leshan. Shall I go on? Take them on faith, Shai Din told me. I do. I do. Just as I believe in who Climbed past this tower to a crumbled post And scratched a lover's name With one loose stone upon one fixed. Ink emptied from some chamber of the heart Leaves me to wonder, from this edge and in my place,  |
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