Metamorphosis of Poetry

By X. Z. Shao

The airs from fifteen kingdoms,

mild and sweet,
blew to the South a cloud of tears.
Qu Yuan drowned himself in the rain.
Tao Qian brewed his wine
and drank it in his hermit hut.
Li Bai rode on his eagle
flying by mountainsides.
Du Fu, a refugee with a lute,  
sang for his fellows displaced.
Li Shangyin walked under
cherry blossoms in morning dews.
Rumi whirled in trance
and ignited his longing into flames.
Shakespeare housed his love
in a crystal time capsule.
Keats wondered in poppy land
listening to his nightingale
sing peace his pain.
Baudelaire kept a garden
of wicked fleurs
guarded by toads wet and cold.
Eliot produced walnuts hard to crush
while Pound, a Medusa,
turned whatever he spotted into rock.
And now mushrooms pop up everywhere,
grow fast, die quick,
infiltrating slimy murky fluid into earth.  .
I’d rather see in my dream,
out of the desolate scene,  
a veiled woman walk in a sea of sands,
or Gondor Queen of Aragon
pine away in the woods of Lothlorien.

                    2014/3/9