Chinese Time
Oh, but Poet crosses eternal
distances. Perfect reader, come though 1,000
years from now. Poem can also reach
reader born 1,000 years before
the poem, wished into being. Li Bai
and Du Fu, lucky sea turtles,
found each other within their lifetimes.
Oh, the hopes of Chinese time
and Chinese poets. You don’t have
to be a poet; you live in the turning
and returning cosmos this way: An act
of love I do this morning saves a life
on a far future battlefield. And the surprising
joy I feel that saves my life comes from
a person whose soul somehow corresponding
with my soul doing me a good deed 1,000
years ago.
Notes:
“Chinese Time” is adapted by Maxine Hong Kingston from I Love a Broad Margin to My Life by Maxine Hong Kingston, copyright © 2011 by Maxine Hong Kingston. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
This poem is part of the portfolio “Maxine Hong Kingston: Water to the Brim.” You can read the rest of the portfolio in the April 2025 issue.
Source: Poetry (April 2025)