Charles Belbin

Shanghai Balcony

Someone has planted
four dawn redwoods at
intervals and they nicely
ascend in height, and beyond
are the tops of other trees
and French chimney pots.
A few swallows glide and
wheel in the evening twilight. 
As the world rushes
headlong to establish,
to re-establish, a hierarchy
dictated by money
have we forgotten 
the common elements
of the four revolutions—
the American, the French
the Russian, the Chinese—
that have created our
modern world? And
are well summed up
by the ideals of the French:
liberté, egalité, faternité.
What would that great
soul, Tu Fu, think of
all this?  Undoubtedly
his concerns would be
the millions and millions
of the floating population
and how that is connected
to the rampant corruption.
The people constrained,
even the mountains and 
rivers endangered.
The four countries of those
revolutions fought and defeated
the countries of overt fascism,
which has now reasserted itself
worldwide as military-
industrial-business complexes.
What else to do but to look
within, as age-old wisdom
instructs us.  Longing
to ask that great soul’s
advice, pouring over his
poems, this weary pilgrim
remains perplexed, scratching
and scratching an old balding head.