So much silk is unfurling
Non-stop under my skin
That my guardians had to give me refuge
In that Shaolin temple, among the inn-attending clergy
Here, little girl, they said, you will
Learn how to write on wind with your foot
And following the wind across the city seas
You will learn the skill
Of throwing little winged pencils
(Of untying the navel with your eyes closed
And cutting the nipple)
I have seen crazy teachers sing and love
Seen them jump over lime trees and water towers
And sometimes run alongside walls of houses tipsily
But in the morning they sweep up their bare rooms soberly
They gently clothe their bare wives and lads
Tie up what is left of their hair
Into a pigtail of sentences
And hover over sacred keyboards
The first lesson I have mastered it in domestic science
I have wound all the silk into bolts
As if in a little yard-goods shop
It took me thirty years
And it will take me another thirty
To classify the buttons of words
And all those applications
I am afraid that, in the meantime,
The teachers will grow old, they will finish their pipes of faith
And with them their boldness and wisdom
I dread to think what is to become of their bones in textbooks
No man alive will ever again be able
To piece together a poet