Advice for Poets No fly-thronged bazaar. No carpets. No Morocco.

No clothes-lines strung on tenement tops Where swarthy Susannas, sopping veils dropped, Rub themselves in private With oil and unguent. No midday martellato On the mud-brick. The morning spoke cloudy Cantonese, No Mandarin standard imperial sun, No orange heat Calligraphed across the sky Writing warmth for everyone Whos learned to read Its thousand unseen brushstrokes. You must learn each day Like a Chinese character, Softly intoning the radicals it contains, Never forgetting to break everything Down to its root base, To discover, say, The formulae of things: To shine is the sun Lording over trees; To buy, a gentlemen Eyeing cowries; Leisure is the moon Peeking through cracks In a gate; Being pleased, A dove alight, two mouths agape, Amid grass-blades, Yawning.