Old Hometown.

Huang Xiang

Old Hometown

 In the shadow
 of the Cloud Spruce
 the young girl
 shrivels into
 an old woman

 She turns to look
 The pomegranates of time
 crack open
 On the blue-organdy platter of
 the empty alley
 the fading sunhaze on the roof ridge
 as desolate as
 an age spot

 Behind her
 the wind settles
 and dogs bark
 In the clear sunlight
 elusive mountain music
 stands
 in mystery
 A tree bears flowers of melancholy
 beyond
 a steady gaze

 1987

Huang Xiang was born in Hunan Province, China, in 1941. He began writing poetry in the 1950s and has been imprisoned repeatedly for his work. In 1978 he founded "Enlightenment," the first underground writers' society, and started a literary magazine under the same name. In exile in the United States since 1997, he has been a resident poet in Pittsburgh under the PEN Cities of Asylum program for writers and currently lives in New Jersey with his wife and son. Huang's Out of Communist China, a bilingual anthology, was published in 2003, and a new selection of his poems, A Lifetime Is a Promise to Keep, will be published in spring 2008. As a juror for the 2008 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, he nominated Tibetan writer Tsering Woeser for the award.