From Robert A. Kapp, Port Townsend, WA, who was a student of Mr. Huang's at Yale in the mid-sixties.
Dear Mr. Huang,
Forty five years on,
I think I have an inkling
Of how much you knew,
And how much I didn't know,
And how hard it must have been for you to have to
Talk "Special English" or "Special Chinese" to me,
In your unforgettably resonant voice,
About the tiniest tips of the Chinese icebergs
That I still struggle to understand,
Forty-five years on.
But all in all, if we could meet now,
I think we would have much more to share,
About China and about life.
Perhaps you would even feel that I had improved with age.
After A Heavy Snow
By Parker Po-Fei Huang
A bank of whiteness
Is all I see. Have I
tossed away the world
or the world me? Or
is it just a single
moment that I stand on
a sheer precipice
with clouds passing
through me?
Some mists sweep the
sky. Some stars elicit
serenity. I feel that
I am gathering the
reflections of a flower
in the water and that of
the moon in the mirror—
no scent, no motion,
yet I sense eternity.
I stop breathing lest
I wake myself. From
where, of what world,
have I come here? I
turn my head and see
there are only footprints
that follow me.
Monday, March 17, 2008
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1 comment:
Dear Bob,
Thanks so much for your poem! I'm sure Da is smiling from somewhere up there-- probably in the mists over the mountain peaks in Guilin!
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