I picked a book of your poems up

Deep in a second-hand bookshop

Your poems are written in Classical Chinese Verse Forms

I am not a scholar so accept this fact blindly

 

It has been stormy recently

But today is fine and I am sitting beachside

Enjoying a morning coffee

Yet my book of poems troubles me

 

Was the man who wrote these poems

Responsible for the deaths of millions of his countrymen

It is sobering reflection

That I have not fully resolved

 

The roc wing fanwise

Soaring ninety thousand li

Are the opening lines

Of a poem written in 1965

 

I think that I understand this poem

But I am being distracted

By a seagull hovering over the sea

I may be mistaken but I am sure that it has been watching me