Poem of the week

Ku Li by Robin Hyde

Two words from China: 'Ku li' – bitter strength.
'This coolies' war!' tinkle the sweet-belled idle.
His face and Hundred Names sweep on below,
Child-like, he plays at horse without the bridle:
And carts a world along, and carts a war,
Tugging perhaps to mountain heights at length:
The new vernacular chronicles exhort him,
And waste their breath.
His grinning face can't know
Half the fixed meanings of the flags he saw:
He had a happy childhood: then time caught him,
Broadened his shoulders, but forbore his head.

Eight years his life between the shafts: eight hours
(With luck), between Changsha and Hsuchowfu,
Picks swinging like pendulums in a noon of flowers:
Shining their freedom, bombers spot his blue,
But cease to count. Too poor for marriage-bed
He looks for dreaming in the big dim shed,
Rolled in the quilt where other warmth has dossed:

Turns to Yunnan, hacks the next strategy through,
Cheerful; and often killed; and always bossed.
And not on Tiger Head or Purple Mountain
His grave-mound rises: worlds live on, to slake
Their ashy gullets at his bitter fountain
Of blood and vigour. Enemy armies break
Somehow on this, as somehow cracks the stone
Under his pick: but now he rots alone
(Not claiming to have died for something's sake,)
Only the earth makes ready for his bone,
The green rice sees him with unflattering eyes:

Too cheap a partisan for man to prize,
Men seldom know him for their broadest river,
And burnt in the immortal tiles forever.