WEBVTT

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And here, if I have the
time to read a poem--

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I think I'll do it.

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OK.

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This is a cycle of four or
five shortish poems called

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"To the Chinese Comrades."

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I think it is up
[INAUDIBLE], dedicated,

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needless to say to Chairman Mao.

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It's in sections.

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This is not just a poem to
the Chinese comrades as of now

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but to my own, very
personal conception

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of the Chinese people
and through history

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and a peculiar feeling
of relationship

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to them and to their cousins,
the American Indians.

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"The armies of China
and Russia stand

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facing across a wide plain"--

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this is a dream--

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"Khrushchev on one side
and Mao on the other.

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Khrushchev calls out, pay
me the money you owe me.

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Mao laughs and laughs, long
hair flops, his face round

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and smooth.

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The armies start
marching-- they meet--

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without clashing.

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They march through each
other, lines between lines.

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All the time, Mao
Tse-tung laughing.

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He takes heaps of money.

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He laughs, and he gives
it to Khrushchev."

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"Chairman Mao's
belongings on the March."

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This refers to the Long
March of the 1930s.

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"Chairman Mao's
belongings on the March--

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two cotton and wool mixture
blankets, a sheet, two pants

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and jacket, a sweater,
a patched umbrella,

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an enamel mug for a rice bowl,
a gray briefcase with nine

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pockets."

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"Like Han-shan standing there,
a rubbing off some cliff,

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hair sticking out, smiling,
maybe rolling a homegrown Yenan

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cigarette.

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Took a crack at politics.

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The world is all one.

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Crawling out that
hillside cave dirt house.

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Whatever happened to Wong--

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quit Chinese school, slugged
his dad, left the laundry,

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went to sea, out
the golden gate.

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Did he make AB?

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Black eggshell thin
pots of Lung-shan,

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maybe 3,000 years BC."

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"You have killed.

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I saw the Tibetans just
down from the passes,

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limping in high
felt boots, sweating

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in furs, flatland heat.

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And from Almora,
gazing at Trisul,

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the new maps from Peking call
it all China, clear down to here

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and the Gangetic plain.

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From Hong Kong New
Territories on a pine rise,

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see the other side--

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stub fields, geese,
ducks, and children.

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Far-off cries.

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Down the river, tiny men
walk a plank-- maybe loading

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little river boat.

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Is that China, flat,
brown, and wide?"

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"The ancestors, what
did they leave us.

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K'ung fu-tze, a few
old buildings remain,

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and tons of soil gone.

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Mountains turn desert, stone
croppt flood, strippt hills,

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the useless wandering
river mouths, salt swamps,

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silt on the floor of the sea.

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Wind-borne glacial
flour, ice age of Europe,

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dust storms from Ordos to
Finland, the loess of Yenan.

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Glaciers 'shrink and
vanish like summer clouds.'

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Cross the snowy mountain
we shall see Chairman Mao!"

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"The year the Long March
started, I was four.

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How long has this gone on?

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Rivers to wade,
mountains to cross.

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Charles Leong showed me
how to hold my chopsticks

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like the brush.

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Upstairs, a Chinese restaurant
catty-corner from the police.

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Portland, Oregon, 1951.

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Yakima Indian horseman,
hair black as crows,

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shovel-shaped incisors,
epicanthic fold.

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Misty cliffs and
peaks of the Columbia.

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Old loggers vanish in the rocks.

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They wouldn't tote me rice
and soy sauce cross the dam.

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Snyder, you gettin' just
like a damn Chinaman.

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Gambling with the
Wasco the Wishram

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by the river under
Hee Hee Butte.

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And bought a hard round
loaf of weird bread

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from a bakery in a tent, in a
camp of Tibetans at Bodh-Gaya,

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where Guatama used to stay."

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