The landscape of what country Gives shape and color to our traveler And his traveling dreams?

Does he wake like Tu Fu To watch frost, white on the ground Next to his bed, and remember

That in the dream he was dreaming, The tree lined road on which he was Strolling, and even the trees in flower

Were from elsewhere? All this of course Discerned as landscape usually is In dreams, as a backwards gaze cast

At the horizon receding from a speeding Train window: there those spires of an ancient Temple, there that trussed bridge across

A river with a woman's name he might Have once loved, there that dark bodied Shirtless peasant bent over the plow and ox

Tilling the loamy clay like his grandfather And grandfather's father, there that sudden Proverb from one of his unspoken languages

Bursting like a tear, like a bone, from his Skin: a washerman's dog belongs to Neither the house nor the ghat of the world.