Children’s Rhyme

Grandmother, last night
I dreamed again I was a child
dancing round and round
a wooden table. Singing a song
you gave me in your tongue
years ago, about the boy with
his goats out in the cold
climbing mountains crossing rivers
in search of home. In the morning
I woke and summoned the lyrics
to myself. But that memory
escaped me, dived into
the depths from which all
dreams spring. All I found was
tentative, a word, a half-phrase,
a fragment of a line, pieces of
a broken whole. So often you and
the language of you elude
me now, and against this loss
I ache and struggle, fail
and fail again to find my words.
Still I suspect the history of me
is there, unerased, the schools
and campaigns can’t wipe it out,
no, only send it into hiding.
You are dead and gone,
I’m lost, forlorn, but that boy
I used to be – he’s alive.
Round and round my head
he runs, rhyme reciting,
the words of a lost language
still escaping always escaping as
I climb the cold mountains,
cross the rivers in search of home.

I like this poem by Mr. Wang!