At The East Lake Where I'm Often Drunk, Thoroughly

Make a run for cherry blossom season once all the books are closed

Tourists on campus marvel at bubblegum webs while military drills

Ring out in the courtyards, the future of the nation at work while

Others play basketball.

I never stopped being a stranger, but here I am, mapless and bold

With a face that grows unremittingly old.

Walk past the disreputable DVD stall where I found last week

Deep Throat (dubbed in Mandarin and German and not a single subtitle)

And over there the restaurant of the elite where I once ate sweet pork

With the college president who all the local gangsters answer to.

A student waves to me, that blond one who never comes to class,

And who gifted me once with a sword from the Wudang Mountains;

What a cynical arrangement it is that he might just pass.

Stop at my daily seller to find his freezer empty,

Hot tinnies only!

But the kind man smiles, goes to his van and personal icebox

And out he brings five frozen bottles – unevenly labelled Tsingtao;

I cheer at the frosted green glass, knowing full and well

How untrustworthy the contents.

Henhao.  Xiexie.

Outside campus where little roads bend and curl around the East Lake

Sun-blasted worms fail to wriggle beneath me and an accidental loon

Moans high above somewhere in the trees – nature is constrained here.

And strangers are the birds.

Hold a bottle up to the forehead for coolness and walk

To the little bridge by the water where I sit and get plastered

Most if not every day since we parted.

Alone with the bobbing and fluttering of beetles and hornets

And other multi-coloured heat-seeking missiles

And the shouts of a fisherman on the lake who I don’t think

Is drowning

I begin to relax and settle in my home away from home

Away from home away from....

Stop!

Beer.

It’s true I never stopped being a stranger like that loon in the trees

Not even at dinner with your mother when she smiled

And though I didn’t quite understand everything she said

There was clearly pride in the way she looked at you

Her only daughter.

 Oh, if you could see me now...

Here at the East Lake, settled

A kind of peace is possible far from home

I am that loon in the trees, a well-known stranger in town

Friend to the beetles and hornets and hopefully soon

Among all the fishermen unwilling to drown.