Three Poems

Letter to Alexander Fu

A few days after your first birthday,
we had lunch on soup I made for grown-ups,
your father took you from your mother's arms,
carried you around our house to show you the sights;
he passed a painting of barren Sarah offering Hagar
to Abraham, old as I am - then he stopped
before a half-naked lady looking in a mirror,
her two faces made you laugh.
In the library he showed you a family
resting on a hillside while their donkey grazed.
He did not tell you who they were, or that they were
on their way to Egypt.
He explained in Chinese and English:
'In this kind of painting, you must show the source of light.
The sunlight is behind the olive tree, the donkey
and sleeping father in shade.'
...