The Branch Will Not Break. James Wright A.

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      AS I STEP OVER A PUDDLE AT THE END OF

      WINTER, I THINK OF AN ANCIENT

      CHINESE GOVERNOR

       And how can I, born in evil days And fresh from failure, ask a kindness of Fate?

      —Written A.D. 819

      Po Chu-i, balding old politician,

      What’s the use?

      I think of you,

      Uneasily entering the gorges of the Yang-Tze,

      When you were being towed up the rapids

      Toward some political job or other

      In the city of Chungshou.

      You made it, I guess,

      By dark.

      But it is 1960, it is almost spring again,

      And the tall rocks of Minneapolis

      Build me my own black twilight

      Of bamboo ropes and waters.

      Where is Yuan Chen, the friend you loved?

      Where is the sea, that once solved the whole loneliness

      Of the Midwest? Where is Minneapolis? I can see nothing

      But the great terrible oak tree darkening with winter.

      Did you find the city of isolated men beyond mountains?

      Or have you been holding the end of a frayed rope

      For a thousand years?