Explore "To LI t'Ai Po" by Maxwell Bodenheim on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
/ They are writing poems to you: / White devils who have not / Smeared the distant yellow of your life / Upon their skins. / Faces where snob and harlequin / Ogle each other in two, cold colours, / White and red; / Faces where middle age / Sits, tearing a last gardenia; / Faces continually cracked / By the brittle larceny of age; / Faces where emotions / Stand disarmed within a calm mirage: / These faces bend over paper / And steal from you a little silver and red / So that their lives may seem to bleed / Under the prick of a flashing need.
/ The old and tired smile / Of one who spies too much within himself / To spare the effort of a halting frown, / Brushed its sceptre over your face. / You gave kind eyes to your hope, / Desiring it to grope unfearing / Underneath the toppling mountain-tops. / The wine you drank was a lake / In which you splashed and found a vigour; / The wine you drank was void of taste. / Your yellow skin resembled / A balanced docility / Smiling at all things -- even at itself -- / Li T'ai Po.