While The Clouds Blow In From The South
A new poem by Rob Schackne
Inner Mongolia or Nei Menggu
shares an international border
with Mongolia (of course) and Siberian Russia
it stretches almost two and a half thousand kilometres
and Shaanxi province lies just beneath it where
three million farmers will face urban relocation
where it happens that a shining woman
I am starting to love a little comes from
(yes, Eleanor, it’s on the fabled Silk Road —
and yes I have “guessed at the layers of her face”)
although I know today’s easy trading
comes from another furious direction
only now I am forced (again) to consider
to whose greater detriment it will be
if ever we crossed those long borders
how we would ever walk such a distance.
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Rob Schackne lives in Shanghai
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Sun 11 August 2013 in
