Poems by the Chinese Concrete Plant Worker Shu Ting (Female)

This entry contains nutrition for the soul; it contains several poems by Shu Ting, a female concrete plant worker. 

Maple Leaf

Here is a heart-shaped leaf

Picked up by a gentle hand...

On a very special hillside

At the edge of a special wood.

But still the leaf reminds me

Of a twilit avenue,

A mind crowded with thoughts

Released on a gentle breath

That scattered from my shoulders

The rays of the setting sun.

Again, on a special evening

That touch alights on me

Having grown heavy with meaning.

This time I can't deny it,

Deny that intimacy.

Now, when the wind rises

I am prompted to turn my head

And listen to you, leaf,

As you quiver on your twig.

Gifts

My dream is the dream of a pond

Not just to mirror the sky

But to let the willows and ferns

Suck me dry.

I'll climb from the roots to the veins,

And when leaves wither and fade

I will refuse to mourn

Because I was dying to live.

My joy is the joy of sunlight.

In a moment of creation

I will leave shining words

In the pupils of children's eyes

Igniting golden flames.

Whenever seedlings sprout

I shall sing a song of green.

I'm so simple I'm profound!

My grief is the grief of birds.

The Spring will understand:

Flying from hardship and failure

To a future of warmth and light.

There my blood-stained pinions

Will scratch hieroglyphics

On every human heart

For every year to come.

Because all that I am

Has been a gift from earth.

Fairy Tales

You believed in your own story,

then climbed inside it--

a turquoise flower.

You gazed past ailing trees,

past crumbling walls and rusty railings.

Your least gesture beckoned a constellation

of wild vetch, grasshoppers, and stars

to sweep you into immaculate distances.

The heart may be tiny

but the world's enormous.

And the people in turn believe--

in pine trees after rain,

ten thousand tiny suns, a mulberry branch

bent over water like a fishing-rod,

a cloud tangled in the tail of a kite.

Shaking off dust, in silver voices

ten thousand memories sing from your dream.

The world may be tiny

but the heart's enormous.

About the Book
I copied Ting's work from The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry, edited by J.D. McClatchy. 


About the Picture

This picture was taken of flowers in a garden bed in Chicago.