James Thomas Stevens Poems

for Arthur Sze
I.

Somehow precise and unquestionable,
the cut of the Chinese man's hair.
...

I.

The earth and its foregoing, this could be horizon.
Combined, the radicals pressed into one another.
...

As it would for a prow, the basin parts with your foot.
Never a marsh, of heron blue
but the single red feather
from the wing of some black bird, somewhere
...