The Paint-Set

Last night
I dreamed
Of a Chinese paint-set
Like the one I owned as a child.
With wolfshair brush
Crooked carefully in my hand
I painted vast scenes
Of my imaginings
On crackling rice paper:
Red and blue, yellow and white
With daubs of black, here and there.
Grinding my inkstone
Into waterydark blackgrey I
Traced the mysterious sigils
Of Bamboo, Luck, and Blossom
To match my perfect pictures;
Masterpieces!--or so I thought,
And hung hem on the wall.

Pasted there, alone, forlorn,
They tranformed magically
From lovely landscapes
To children's copies
Of fine work foreign to their minds
Old mistakes blaring
From behind the painstaking layers
Of green, green, green;
The black, tracing river currents
Standing unblended
In the midst of waterfall blue--
I sneered, staring
At spidery Chinese letters
Bloched by a trembling
Western hand.

Last night
I dreamed
Of a wolfshair brush
Dipped in deepest blue
That swept, S-shaped,
Across a sky of white rice paper
Again and again:
A waterfall of color
With currents greenblack gliding through
And foaming white delicately daubed
By a bamboo-handled brush
A perfect painting
Like the Chinese Masters
Pressing, pressing, bursting through
Old dams in my imagination.

(Based on an actual dream. Could probably use some work.)