Xiahe :Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Gansu province, the People’s Republic of China

In came to me in red rainbow dreams
and Rochdale girls that buy beauty.
A picture of Che and the
East Sea winds of Qiu Jin.
A spirit and passion born.

Some said this was a wasted landscape.
My history teacher, too weak to carry on
and full of thinning dreams.
Told me “Just partake with others”

Now, cold in the delicate snow
the poets are silent.
Dying and dying with no reason to make things grow.
Bruised and bloody and beating a course
of sound and sense.
A few frozen snapshots and secret codes.

The idle and the lazy all dazzling with moonlight.
Left hanging and ashamed of saying nothing.
And the Rochdale girls, no longer productive.
Look for the dead poets
And the Beat’s flowering of days gone by.