for my friends in Shanghai and Hong Kong

Coming is an empty promise, and departure leaves no trace

     Li Shang-Yin (untitled)

There, your Year of the Horse, but here is only

This arbitrary year opening into its new morning

That is no different from the old year's, the few

Birds staying still in the wet wind or leaving  

Bare and broken nests and abbreviated songs

To pick again through the frosted grass for seeds

Where none were yesterday, as if this morning

Were something more or less than the same

Old and cold continuing season.  

                                               Yet still we think

To come again to some departure and arrival,

Our ancient need to begin with foreknowing,

As though to name this new year will make

It so, already beginning as something we will

Have any word for only after when what we say

Will be nothing like what we thought to see.

But for now there are these familiar shadows

Under the same brief light, the empty trees,

The birds whose old hunger is nothing new.