Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE MISSIONARY'S SON WRITES IN HIS DIARY, by CLIFFORD GESSLER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE MISSIONARY'S SON WRITES IN HIS DIARY, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: I am gnawn with desire for the daughters of lam kee chow
Last Line: It is madness! I write no more.
Subject(s): Asia; Desire; Diaries; Far East; East Asia; Orient


I am gnawn with desire for the daughters of Lam Kee Chow:
Lovely of face and of body, lovely of speech and name;
Lam Po Loo and her sister, Lam Sui-lau,
Not one or another, but both, have set me aflame.

Lam Po Loo is slender and delicate-fashioned,
Her eyes are as lakes, fringed with shadowy palms;
Lam Sui-lau is sturdy and supple-passioned --
Their faces are moon-flower petals; their voices are psalms.

They have eaten the jointed roots of the lotus flower
And their breath and their words are sweet with the lotus bloom:
(I am shaken with fever, I dream of a secret hour
In the fragrant desirable depths of an exquisite doom).

They and I -- but no, I am mad, we shall never
Sip of the bowl I would drain in a toxic trance
Nor eat of the pallid roots of the lotus together
Where the feathery bamboos wave in a ghostly dance.

My father is stern and hard and bitter with zeal;
And Lam Kee Chow is subtle and grave and wise.
I am crushed with a terrible dread lest I reveal
The thought of my mind to the searching of their eyes.

Yet I cannot choose -- though daily anew I vow
To prison my love with the seal of an iron door --
But embrace with my eyes the daughters of Lam Kee Chow --
And my veins leap --
It is madness! I write no more.





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