A Chinese Woman

The apparition of these faces in the crowd
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX— Ezra Pound

Chinese schoolgirls dressed all in white
Ivory pawns on a chessboard

Mirrors hung in a pool of light
The raised faces of Chinese girls

A vein of quartz running through rock
The white necks of Chinese women

The swaying hips of Chinese girls
Ticking of a pendulum clock

A Chinese woman’s sweating brow
Cracked glaze on a ceramic bowl

Liquorice falling over snow
The black hair of Chinese women

Closed buds in a vase of lilies
The black eyes of Chinese women

A Chinese woman’s dangled leg
Lost marbles of Praxiteles

The flowing waists of Chinese girls
Coral drained through an hourglass

Sand grains caught in a tulip shell
The calves of a Chinese waitress

Wooden flowers turned on a lathe
The tiny feet of Chinese girls

A Chinese woman’s smiling mouth
A bed that is never unmade

Dice thrown in a bowl of crystal
The laughter of Chinese children

Coins dropped into a wishing well
The faces of Chinese women

— Hong Kong, December 2024

• • • • •

In this poem I tried to find an English equivalent to Chinese verse forms in which to present these images. Our tetrameter (four metrical feet) is probably the closest equivalent to the five-syllable Chinese form called wujue (五絕), which was popular during the Tang Dynasty (618-907), and I have retained the latter’s quatrains composed of matched couplets. These are ordered, respectively, by lines with the word ‘Chinese’ in them, designating the referent (R) of the image, and by lines with the simile (S) in them, as follows: RSSR/SRRS/RSSR/SRRS/RSSR/SRRS/SRSR. Within this order the lines are rhymed according to the following pattern (in which x designates the absence of rhyme): AxAx/BxxB/CxCx/DxxD/ExEx/FxxF/xGxG. Further variations are introduced by where the word ‘Chinese’ appears in each referent line, which is determined by use of the possessive apostrophe (‘Chinese woman’s’) or possessive preposition (‘of Chinese girls’). The tension between these two patterns, and the variations within them, allows the repetition of similes in the poem to be sustained without becoming aurally repetitive. But that is the work of versification: their ultimate purpose is to create the structure in which these concrete images — which I picked up on the streets of Hong Kong as I would dropped coins — could be presented as poetic verse. The epigraph is from Ezra Pound’s imagist poem, ‘In a Station of the Metro’ (1913).