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

Robert A. Kapp Memories

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.

1 comment:

Tingkun55 said...

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!