“Fierce browed I coolly

Defy a thousand pointing fingers

Head bowed like a willing ox

I serve the children”

 

How many times in a day

Do I think of you Lu Hsun

A man I could never have known

You died in china long before

I saw the light

In China you wrote in Kwangchow

Hiding from Northern Warlords

In hospitals where you

Stayed in the carpenters room

When the beds were filled

Exiled in your own country

In that small room I see you

Smoking with fingers stained yellow

Ocher by you bitter pleasure

You kept writing for the future

How could you have known?

Your words would find me

In my small kitchen in Harlem

Where I hide from Corporate Warlords

“Fierce browed I coolly defy

A thousand pointing fingers….

 

How beautiful the calligraphy

I cannot decipher

Head bowed like a willing ox

I serve the children”

 

Your couplet my mantra

My talisman my power

I have only the translation into English

How I yearn to understand the thousand

Hidden images that

Flowed from your brush

My ignorance of your language

Frustrates me as I

Humbly accept your gift

My attachment to you beyond time and space

How your words help me

Pull my load

For that I thank you