Hands of Han

Oh, I am haunted by the hands of Han.

Behind the bamboo curtain, now,

What is there for them?

You came that day, and laid them into mine. Frail and fine,

Firm on slender wrists.

I turned them over, and the pallid palm

Told me their history

But not this.

Decades, centuries—no milleniums

Of scholars bore those hands before you. With that curling, glossy forenail

(Which I pared away)

Traced Confucius' Analects in columns, Poems of Tu-Fu and Wang-Wei.

In silken sleeves, they poised with brush, Painting orchids and bamboo,

Poetry in pictures, scenes in verse; Transcribing essays in fine hiroglyph, Hovering over ivory chessmen, Ivory chopsticks plucking morsels

From a Teh-hwa dish.

Yours were quick to grasp the tonic, Firm with major, minor mood.

Ivory keyboard seemed your chosen tool. Mozart Rondos sparkled, elegant and fine; Debussy was decadent, Chopin languishing, And Bach was pure brush line.

Then they came with drums and scarlet slogan, And we fled

You from your piano, I from Golden China, Turned red.

Did I wrong to teach you music?

Was piano but another gadget

From the West, to add to Chaos?

Did Beethoven write for all the world-but you?

O frail, lovely, haunting hands of Han,

Behind the bamboo curtain, now,

Is there aught for you?

Pierre Foreau

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