China and the West

Snyder, Gary. Working on the '58 Willys pickup. In : Snyder, Gary. Axe handles : poems. (Port Townsend, Wash. : Cooper Canyon Press, 1978).
For Lu Yu [Lu You].
The year this truck was made
I sat in early morning darkness
Chanting sutra in Kyoto,
And spent the days studying Chinese.
Chinese, Japanese, Sanskrit, French –
Joy of Dharma-scholarship
And the splendid old temples –
But learned nothing of trucks.
Now to bring sawdust
Rotten and rich
From a sawmill abandoned when I was just born
Lost in the young fir and cedar
At Bloody Run Creek
So that clay in the garden
Can be broken and tempered
And growing plants mulched to save water –
And to also haul gravel
From the old placer diggings,
To screen it and mix in the sand with the clay
Putting pebbles aside to strew on the paths
So muddy in winter –
I lie in the dusty and broken bush
Under the pickup
Already thought to be old –
Admiring its solidness, square lines,
Thinking a truck like this
would please Chariman Mao.
The rear and rebuilt and put back
With new spider gears,
Brake cylinders cleaned, the brake drums
New-turned and new brake shoes,
Taught how to do this
By friends who themselves spent
Youth with the Classics –
The garden gets better, I
Laugh in the evening
To pick up Chinese
And read about farming.
I fix truck and lock eyebrows
With tough-handed men of the past.