Classic Poem

Chinatown

A bit of East within a Chinese wall
Of magic, color, smell and sound —
Enclosed, and yet forever bound
Unto the west; an alien, bartering all
Its Asian mysteries in coin of trade;
Sharp, yet hidden as a sheathed blade.

A town of fantasy, pagoda hung;
Of flowered balconies with lanterns strung,
And slant eyes beckoning from balustrades.
A young town wrapped in dreams of dead decades;
A weaver making garment of the woof
Of commerce, wound with vision of Lao Tzu
The mystic; and the sad songs of Tu Fu;
And love of great Ming Huang, with souls aloof,
A town of sleeping homes, when day is through;
The Occident alone wakes up anew,
To eat and dance upon the Shanghai's roof,
Stamping its maudlin mirth with cloven hoof.

Here's teak from forests older than the T'ang
Silks, sandalwood and ivories displayed
Behind plate glass. Brass, cloisonne, cool jade.
A bell that once in Manchu temple rang
The Dragon and Republic in parade,
Firecrackers popping in toy cannonade.
Chop suey. Ginger. Nuts. One Doctor Chang,
Compounding wizard's brew of herb and fang.
The day's news on red paper on brick walls.
Shark's fins and octopus within a monger's stalls,
And, lone as Ishmael, upon a stone-paved street
A prisoned wildcat screaming in his cage
At greedy buyers, who would rend his meat
And grow to strength transmuted from his rage.

A withered man, with dimming eyes grown old,
But fingers delicate as any girl's,
Sits fashioning strange marvels from raw gold,
And jewels them with rubies and with pearls.
In houses of the Joss the sweet punks burn
To Buddha. At carved altars Ancients say
The Taoist prayers in poesy of fire;
While at Confucius' feet the sages learn;
To Him whose cross gleams whitely from the spire,
The incense rises, drifting higher, higher;
All earthly passions die, and tired hearts sing;
And hope is as the peach tree in the spring.

Small silk-swathed children, robin breasted, bright
And pert as sparrows, yet as strangely shy
As mountain quail in sudden flurried flight,
Flash out of alleys, cross curb, ever nigh
To death beneath some grinding juggernaut;
Then, tiring of life's fan-tan, so dear bought,
Turn unto other games, serene, alone,
Till dragged within doors by some gibbering crone.
Here, the Six Companies hold solemn meet;
There, reedy music and oboe calls
Unto the playhouse down the little street;
While ghosts of slain men stalk within the halls
And gape across the tables of the Tong;
The Piper pipes, and Death strikes his dull gong.

Some twenty posters ask for charity
For white man's need; the yellow will respond:
Of time, of gold, of self, equally free,
His spoken word good as a witnessed bond.

Within its Chinese wall, East goes its way;
And at the edge, upon each slippered day
The West crowds hard, lustful as sin —
Yet never wholly enters in.English