Roll of the Yunnan undulous roads
Along a coarse mountain shoulder
Waves of sun-streak mountain peaks
Rejoicing in the wild horizon’s swell,
Where black goats peck roadside grass
Remembering lost, more ancient paths
And borders dissolve in love-welled eyes,
In the enduring songs of lost hillsides,
Leaves of memories, sworn to secrecy.
Spry figures who sprout out of fields
As lonely as the drum of buffalo plod,
A baby cross-braced, seed in the land
And feet clod-firm in this crimson soil,
A life as short as this season’s cycle.
The road rolls by, concrete without pity
Into childless hands of the coupling city.