A Chinese Radical Lll Poem by Morgan Michaels

Her English was improving by the minute, thanks to my influence, I guessed.

'But what's the secret of it'?

As an American I knew there was a secret to everything.

'Are there pictures inside them- like the man in the moon- that you cobble together into complex words and ideas'?

She laughed again.

'It's nothing like that. Each character stands for a sound. The words are made up of sound bites, not letters. The more characters you know, the more words are possible, and vice-versa'.

This was a novel idea that seemed to make sense. though it didn't leave much room for regionalism, I remarked, recalling those rolled R's.

'No', she agreed, 'it doesn't.

'You mean, all those Chinese poets wrote words made up of sound bites and not proper words'?

'Uh-huh'.

This was too much, and I resolved to burn my anthologies.

'But how many sounds are there', I wondered, remembering the gang-of-twenty-seven confusion.

'Thousands. Fewer, now, of course. We've known dumbing-down, as well'.
But, hey, more people can read.

Idea strange and troubling! The willful maintenance of subtlety and complexity to the detriment of simplicity and stupidity! It was undemocratic! In answer, I simply repeated my dearly-held conviction that Democracy, nobly and regularly, and at great expense, provided the rule of the sneakiest over the most gullible, unmolested, and with apparent due process, all with the aid of network television. I felt like Henry James.

'But, you can get away with about three'.

'Three characters? They must be very busy'!

'Three thousand' she chuckled, tolerantly.

'Mein Gott! We never had to learn so many'!

'Well, we did'.