Chinese Poesy, or Striving in city and heading home
There is a new installation in the Chinese galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of New York. The review that ran in yesterday’s Times struck me. Because, well the writer boiled down the poetry of the Chinese, pretty simply and pretty aptly.
As often as not the mood is regret. If only we could have the old ways back. Or, I miss my distant friends so much. Or, all things die and so must I.
So it may be hard to believe a great body of art can be built on something so simple, but it is true. It is about parting, goodbyes, leaving the city to go for the sylvan idyll. But there it is, and it is a tune the Irish know too. And one I have settled into more than not.
I was reading this on April 13, the famous commemoration day of me leaving New York City in 1973. In fact I was reading it in at bar in Hingham – the then new town home of my parents that I first came to when I came to Boston. At the Snug at 5 oclock time when the just-off-work postal workers on Friday were flirting with the gals.
I wrote a poem or two about striving in city and heading home.
I was reading this on April 13, the famous commemoration day of me leaving New York City in 1973. In fact I was reading it in at bar in Hingham – the then new town home of my parents that I first came to when I came to Boston. At the Snug at 5 oclock time when the just-off-work postal workers on Friday were flirting with the gals.
I wrote a poem or two about striving in city and heading home.
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