The Great Wall of China
This morning I am striding among the Chinese
on their way to work or school I’m on my way to breakfast
They don’t seem unhappy the streets are clean
and they’re in black more than I am in New York City black
Everything is ok the way it is
The rain on the Great Wall today makes it look sad
not because rain is sad
but because it makes the Wall seem even more useless
The Wall that was built to keep people out
now brings people in
I was thinking this this morning in bed
happy to be imagining the Wall and my being there later today
a place I’ve wanted to be ever since the moment I learned it existed
But now Anne Waldman walks up and says Ni hao
bowing slightly at the waist with a smile
How does she go on being Anne Waldman?
The same way the Great Wall goes on going on
—the great bonus of life—
but look out I am becoming too grand not great
and I haven’t even seen the Wall yet I have hit
a wall the wall of seeing my old friend in the street
so I walk along the top of her head the view
on one side is New York on the other is the thing
the incredibly big and old thing the thing
that is secretly smiling it is what we call China
a large vase that shatters and reassembles itself time and again
like a clock that goes tick and then tock
Chinese air in my lungs I am lighter than usual
and the wall even the little part of it I am standing on at Badaling
is suddenly heavier than it was because it is connected to my feet
those of a millipede rolling its 4,000-mile-long body
into the past and back, I am thrilled at Badaling I am thrilled
by the very sound of the word Badaling and what
is useless in my life has taken wing into the aether that protects the human race
Am I great yet? No I am smaller and smaller
and happier to be so, soon I will be only one chopstick tall
and though they say that the journey of a thousand li
begins with a single step what they don’t say is
that the single step is a thousand li long and it is joyous
because you don’t know what a li is and you don’t care
for there are li everywhere and they’re fine where they are
The Wall of course has nothing to say
It used to groan and growl but now it’s like a very old man
you think is grumpy but no he’s not
Perhaps at a certain age holiness slips in automatically
and says Just sit there and don’t say anything it’s alright
But what did I hear was it the holiness of the Wall veering into the distance?
Then I come back standing there atop it
and above me the clouds on their way to New York
one of them shaped like the Wall and I am on it too
“The Great Wall of China” from Ron Padgett’s Collected Poems is used by permission of the author and Coffee House Press.