Classic and Contemporary Poetry
IN A CHINESE RESTAURANT, by CALE YOUNG RICE Poet's Biography First Line: Chop suey,' I say to chung li Last Line: I go to chung. Subject(s): Food & Eating | ||||||||
'Chop suey,' I say to Chung Li, Quaint, quiet, and twenty-three, Who smiles as I wearily enter the door Through a curtain of beads and teak. 'Chop suey. Soon,' he answers me, And slips away like wind in the tree On the lacquered screen in the corner. But I feel in his eye, still as a stone In an idol's head on a temple's throne, A myriad years Of the Whang-Ho, As it tawnily runs Under the suns Of Honan. For Chung's eye holds, as a jade its hue, His gods and the long ancestral line Of the sires he prays to. And it holds the pines by a tea-house door At the foot of a mountain age-divine; And the tea-girl's lute, for the traveller strung, And the misty moon she plays to; And even, I think, the memory Of a sire who one day bowed and poured Wine for Confucius, and adored The Sage, foot-sore and weary. So when I am sick of the noise and heat, Of the Now, which never is complete, Of the rude strife in the rude street, I go to Chung. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...WAITRESSING IN THE ROOM WITH A THOUSAND MOONS by MATTHEA HARVEY CANDIED YAMS' by TERRANCE HAYES DINNER OF HERBS by LOUISE MOREY BOWMAN THE BANQUET SONG by KENNETH KOCH SPLITTING AN ORDER by TED KOOSER A CHARM TO BRING CHILDREN (EGYPT, A.D. 100) by CALE YOUNG RICE |
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