AS DISTANT AS T'ANG CHINA

Du Fu's little daughters

playing with their mother's make-up

in wartime squalor

and you think

it could easily

be Burma, Kinshasa's Congo, Lebanon,

Palestine, South Sudan or Sudan

now

and think of the people surviving

through small joys

like returning Du Fu's gift

to his wife

and the so many,

so many people

who don't care,

to whom Burma, Kinshasa's Congo,

Lebanon, Palestine,

South Sudan and Sudan

are as distant as T'ang China

breaking apart in a storm of war.

25.05.2026