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dare afford the truth, where language does not suffice,
a contract made with ourselves,
showcases of revelation, curiosity-pieces,
forced confessions of our secrets,
past, present, and future,
a deal made with the walls,
an arrangement of heartless decorations,
in which the heart is buried, but never dead,
where the bones of one's life are
compressed, never crowded out.
One's real self covertly exposed
in a maze of complex simplicity.
The passe, old-fashionable furniture
placed in a semi-circle
near to a fireplace
like an invitation to absent friends
who themselves were quite out-of-date.
Dravapalas guardian kings
guarding the entrance to heaven,
seated one on each side.
One's desires, priceless passports
to gain the guardians' permission to enter.
The vast, timeless empire
of ming xing furniture fastidiously placed,
porcelain vases, bronze statues, jade artifacts,
all picked from the bone yards of the ancients.
Sun-dials here and there, denoting
the one sure thing known to be absolute and infinite.
The highway hidden by Spanish moss and lofty sycamores,
The white cranes, hand-forged gates,old Chinese velvet
pomegranates outlined in pale black on an ivory ground,
the shadows hanging from the oaks like dusty curtains,
Corinthian garden-wall fountains on the courtyard walls,
Buddhas and lotus-leafs lining the path,
splashes of colored flowers everywhere the eye can stretch,
landscaped gardening, the human touch of organization,
Japanese rock gardens implying a sense of permanence;
like lines running straight:
forward approaches such as one finds in the country,
out on the farms where everyone knows
the importance of good brakes as well as high horsepower,
where by means of some sixth sense
they, like good watch dogs always know what's coming
before it comes, these down-home people
without put-on airs, but certainly plenty of common sense,
who know the exact distance between two points as the crow flies.
There's something attractive about these simple,
straight-ahead thinking minds.
The surroundings of our world, nothing meant to last,
love of labor fueled by hate.
There are no answers in our surroundings,
only rhetorical questions,
and the Great wall of China, shutting in a mass of people,
shutting out bloody barbarian hordes
storming in from all points of the compass
conquering an empire which from the beginning
was sifting through their hands, this dungeon
with chess pieces carved from moonstone
here where the mind of billions have come
to the conclusions that to revolve
around oneself too much would be harmful.
economic welfare has cut the nerve of humanitarianism.
In the impersonal surroundings of the totalitarian state
the eye knows when to be blind,
the physiognomy of conduct dare not reveal the closet-skeletons
of state and its true face, else one see its real surroundings.
In reality there is no up nor down to it.
One need not guess at the meaning of basic structures,
captains of armies, smart weapons, power-hungry humans,
chief executive officers, artificial intelligence, the stock market,
cutlers,gamesters, surgeons and armorers,
churches, graveyards, black cloth, camps, forges and battlefields,
Presidents, prime-ministers, kings, ayatollahs,
convention halls, prisons, asylums and places where the weapons are made,
altars of churches in magnificent places, castles and palaces,
theaters and audience chambers and believers,
the spectators inside their back yards
like barking dogs in fear of their surroundings.
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