This land of ancients grows on me
Like a soft moss, damp-oozed in time,
Sad breezes churn each soul, unfree,
And sweep me over, like some tide.

Strange voices echo from dim pasts
Long littered with dead Mandarins
I hear, I understand them less
But feel their presence in old sins.

While grace and beauty walk each street
As daughters fan their coal-black hair
The future calls to them, at last
And the world waits, to meet them there.

25 October 2005

David Lewis Paget

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/china-2/