Witherspooner Jean Rodenbough shares a poem reflecting on the mysteries of learning Chinese - and moves beyond that to the mysteries (and our tragic ignorance) now on display in our military venture in Iraq.   [6-21-04]

Reading Chinese

I stare at line pictures
made of marks created centuries past.
I stare, as if these shapes
will suddenly reveal their meaning
if only my eyes and brain can bore
into the page, embedding me in layers
of culture and history to uncover
some mystery, some hidden clue.

But nothing happens.  The case is unsolved.
My study takes me just
to the surface of things.

Take the radicals:
one stroke, a roof perhaps, two strokes a house,
or ten strokes for something more.
They are mysteries, opaque masks
over what has no story.

Like the woman ahead of me
at the Winn-Dixie check-out counter, her cart filled
with Gerber baby food and cereal
and microwave dinners.
What would I know of her
if I continue to stare, study,
drink in the mystery of her?
I see her in my fancies:
As she enters the driveway, a man
comes out of the brick house
to carry in paper and plastic bags
spilling over with necessities;
he has set his cold Coors
on the kitchen table.  The baby crawls
toward the door as this woman
comes through with more bags.

She puts them down, picks up her child,
makes cooing noises
in her mother-tongue.

But I don't know how she really goes home
or who is there to greet her.
I see only a woman filling bags
before she disappears
through the automatic door.

Like those faces on The News Hour
after the news is told, the young men and women
who are dead.
Their uniforms in these pictures
are crisp and bright,
their eyes, eager with adventure, invite.

But now they have no faces,
no framed lines or marks to tell the hidden meaning.
The clues are missing.
Only a name, a rank, a branch of service,
an age, a home town.

We cannot penetrate the surface
of things.  The mystery absorbs
all of us and we are inside
the characters, the lines, the marks,
trying to speak without words.

                Jean Rodenbough