Sean Wayman: ‘The Former Residence of Xue Fucheng Wuxi, China’

The Former Residence
of Xue Fucheng Wuxi, China

To reach the mansion’s modest entrance gate,
where tasselled lanterns hang like fuchsia blooms,
you have to wade a sea of toxic fumes,
where gloomy thoughts refuse to dissipate.

For those who’ve come across this sickly tide
the mansion’s gate assumes a welcome look.
Its narrowness suggests a cosy nook
in which to shelter from the smog outside.

But once you squeeze in through the entranceway
you soon reclaim a sense of open space.
Inside, the courtyard boasts an airy grace—
and bonsai gingko trees in pots of clay.

Grotesquely weathered, full of jagged holes,
a scholar’s rock enchants the pensive gaze.
Its tongueless contours speak of bygone days,
a time of cultivating noble souls.

And down the passageways which probe ahead
you’ll find the silence of ancestral halls,
where ink-brush paintings decorate the walls
and rows of spirit tablets mourn the dead.

But if you yearn to shelter in the past,
a late arrival in a house of ghosts,
the modern marvels which the complex hosts
will place the matter in a different cast.

Nearby, you’ll find a spacious billiard room,
with parrot colours in the window frames;
the foreign voguishness the space proclaims
dispels the former hint of fusty gloom.

In sum, the mansion represents the hope
that past and present can be reconciled,
that cherished custom needn’t be defiled
by granting openness a wider scope.

But when you call to mind the smoggy air,
which haunts the city like a vengeful wraith,
this acrid circumstance may test your faith
and turn your hopefulness to pale despair.

Sean Wayman