though a brave warrior a chief mandarin a librarian of the imperial archive
he fled the war, he fled the peace he let the coat of red silk
sent by his beloved from home go to others.
he left the front and took to a wandering moved by strange and
stranger passion &,
henceforth
all trace of him was lost, except
(that was 1627)
those calligraphies of poems curling with the autumnal leaves (his scars made gold by the early solstice).
emptied of heart
the flowers are kept piled high in the dead monks' cells.
at night the river remains a single silvered o'er braid of pure percussion-
it is still still 1627
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