China, William Empson’s China Poems #2

Posted: May 2nd, 2024 | No Comments »

As with the previous post, again from Empson’s The Gathering Storm (Faber & Faber, 1940)…

China

The dragon hatched a cockatrice

Cheese crumbles and not many mites repair

There is nature about this

The spring and rawness tantalise the air

Most proud of being most at ease

The sea is the most solid ground

Where comfort is on hands and knees

The nations perch about around

Red hills bleed naked into screes –

The classics are a single school

The few large trees are holy trees

They teach the nations how to rule

They will not teach the Japanese –

They rule by music and by rites

They are as like them as two peas

All nations are unitdy sights

The serious music strains to squeeze –

The angel coolies sing like us

Duties, and literature, and fees

To lift an under-roaded bus

The paddy fields are wings of bees

The Great Wall as a dragon crawls

To one who flies or one who sees

The twisted contour of their walls

A liver fluke of sheep agrees

Most rightly proud of her complacencies

With snail so well they make one piece

Most wrecked and longest of all histories.

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