Thursday, October 22, 2009

Tu Fu Comes to America


Here's YouTube I created to bring ancient poet Tu Fu to America.
We need his voice. Just decided to share this today.


















The poem is:

Tu Fu Comes to America

Jobless for two years now, I go out,
leave my sleeping village at dawn
before the cries of birds.
The road to a career cut off
I make myself another path,
ship for America on a dark freighter
crowded with bodies and voices.
I cross the border from Canada
make my way south in the night.

With a sack and walking stick now
I tread the roads of West Virginia
back from the river towns,
down quiet hollows, up the foothills
where farms nest of rocky hills.

Once an hour a pick-up may pass.
Here time isn’t measured so.
People sit out on porches
call to neighbors to sit a while.
In me they see a stranger
till I ask them for a drink of water.
In my face they read a story
eyes meeting across porch steps.
“Come on in, outta the sun,”
they say and open their palms
so that I sit on chair or stoop
cool shade across my lap.

Dogs run about the fenceless yard,
spring water in a clear glass jar.
I’ve traded hope for acceptance,
find myself among new friends
in a land I was meant to know.
In the sounds of late afternoon
they wait for me to speak.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very nicely done. You really capture Tu Fu's essence, even within unfamiliar settings.

Spirit Poems said...

Thanks, Andrew...the poet and person of Tu Fu remains inside of many of us. He listened and he wrote.

John Burroughs said...

I like it too!

Cited...

The poet doesn't invent. He listens. ~Jean Cocteau