ODORS OF ANCIENT TRADITIONS (1994)
by Michael Primont
mprimont@msn.com
Traces of China's ancient legend
in the streets.
Survive. Survive again. Survive today.
Pull that cart, you!
Peddle, peddle, uphill, downhill,
peddle, peddle coal, bricks,
peddle, peddle trash, and sofas,
and tables, and vegetables.
Peddle, peddle your grandmother,
mother, wife, child.
Peddle them all, peddle them all
to school, to work, to the hospital.
Peddle them all.
Three-wheeled bikes with platform cabs.
China is loaded upon them. Loaded upon them.
Loaded upon them.
Graphic displays of wounds:
Leper crouches on the same sidewalk spot
every day for years;
with his stubs, plays the same tunes
every day for years
on a play piano.
Jingle bells.
Cripples hobble on wooden sticks.
Refugees wearing rags and carrying bundles of rags,
come to build a city.
Peddlers with trifles for treasures.
Midnight beggar with a 3 year-old kid
who tugs and implores and grabs your leg
like dog who's learned a trick.
These beggars' misery:
an odor of an ancient past
rises from their ground.
They know how to kowtow.
They remember perfectly,
how to look pitiful,
miserable, pathetic;
how to appear less influential
than a squashed worm.
It's a matter of style.
