When this American woman,

whose thighs are bound in casual red cloth,

comes thundering past my sitting place

like a forest-burning Mongol tribe,

the city is ravished

and brittle buildings of a hundred years

splash into the street;

and my eyes are burnt

for the embroidered Chinese girls,

already old,

and so small between the thin pines

on these enormous landscapes,

that if you turn your head

they are lost for hours.