After Pound’s ‘After Ch’u Yuan’

 Women’s March, Sydney, 21 January 2017

 
photo by Eileen Chong

 We meet at the feet of Queen Vic
to walk to the park where the women

have gathered. We are a rainbow flood.
We have come to stand against the leopards.

There are children among us. There are men
with us. Some of us silent and listening.

Others have spoken. Our bodies are present.
We march on the roads across the city.

The eyes of a woman working a shop floor
follow us. Our song spills down the street.

Overhead, money and clouds.
The procession a dark herd across the tundra.

 

Notes

1. My poem is a response to Ezra Pound’s poem, ‘After Ch’u Yuan’, written in 1914. The full text of the poem is as follows:

After Ch’u Yuan

I will get me to the wood
Where the gods walk garlanded in wisteria,
By the silver-blue flood move others with ivory cars.
There come forth many maidens
                to gather grapes for the leopards, my friend.
For there are leopards drawing the cars.

I will walk in the glade,
I will come out of the new thicket
                and accost the procession of maidens.

2. The line ‘Our song spills down the street’ takes its inspiration from the lines ‘Blessed are the ones who say / they follow songs into the street.’ from Abby E. Murray’s‘Poem For My Daughter Before The March’ (published in The Rattle on 19 January 2017 at http://www.rattle.com/poem-for-my-daughter-before-the-march-by-abby-e-murray/).

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Eileen Chong is a Sydney poet. Burning Rice (Australian Poetry, 2012) was shortlisted for the Anne Elder Award, Australian Arts in Asia Award and the Prime Minister's Literary Award. Her other books are Peony (Pitt Street Poetry, 2014) and Painting Red Orchids (Pitt Street Poetry, 2016). See more of her poetry here »