So here I am quiet, back on my own,
Back from the fellowship, back from the dance;
Now I am reaping what I have sown
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(1) Embrace tiger, return to mountain

Rolling savannah, a snow-capped peak,
In the midst a garden – lush lawns and a lake
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To read a Chinese newspaper, they say,
Three thousand characters you must learn.
The Chinese bow to a discipline stern:
If they learn to read, with their youth they pay.
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The cards have come early – some very nice flowers,
And then one that’s different – I laugh in delight –
An open-mouthed tortoise, high in the air,
Trying to catch a frisbee in flight!
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How does one distil death from a poppy?
Where does one get the barbiturates from?
How retain sense of self, and escape
The black-coated, white-coated guardians of doom?
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Here is steppeland. Staffordshire. Flat.
In relentless wind flags strain and crack.
A storm blows in from distant fields –
From Russia and Burma, Iceland, Iraq.
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My second-floor flat is a home in the tree-tops,
Against the hard city great trees are a screen:
A chestnut, some birches, a huge twinkling aspen -
Their leaves in the sunlight dance golden and green.
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To Rising Dragon Tai Chi, in gratitude:
Note: Each of the movements in Tai Chi is called a “posture”. The whole sequence of postures is known as “the form”. Practising Tai Chi is described as “playing the form”.

Time slammed me down the mountain,
Hurled me from rock to rock
In a torrent of obligations,
Doing bad work by the clock.
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