Writer-in-residence in limbo.(New poems)(Poem)

 
Writer-in-residence in limbo 
 
after Li Po 
 
   How little they cared the cost! 
   Fine food on dishes of green jade, 
   like Ming grave goods-- 
 
   if I had died and gone to heaven, 
   heaven was a minor outpost, 
   far from the emperor's favor. 
 
   It was the raisin capital of the world, 
   where I ate and drank and did not think once 
   of you back east. I must have died. 
 
   One of the women drove me east 
   to see the giant sequoias. I was so small, 
   just clay in the shape of a servant at their feet. 
 
   Far above me, boughs swished and sighed 
   like the silken sleeves of court, 
   the needles unthreading. 
 
   Sometimes we took boys with us 
   to carry ...