In the poem a duck is paddling alone
Somewhere in China – in the northern sand,
The luxuriant south, or the airless peaks -
Too vast to match with the map is this land!

I faint at the thousands of arbitrary symbols,
The sibillant speech and the homophones,
But sometimes catch an echo of sense
From magic scrawls on millennial bones.

In the local museum are grave Tang horses,
And translucent animals won from stone,
Embroidered silks and ancient calligraphy –
And the duck in the poem, paddling alone.