Macro

I try to explain the word
to undergraduates (who only worry will this be on the exam)

I understood it
stood under it actually
when I saw an exhibit of scroll paintings
from twelfth-century China
at the DeYoung (SF CA)



They were thirty feet long or more
would have been unrolled slowly by a slave on the left
taken up by another on the right
a moving picture for an afternoon’s entertainment
of gentle men seated, drinking, conversing
perhaps getting up to put poetry to the painting itself

The scenes were vast
mountains reaching well beyond their timber lines
clouds and birds (and poetry, always poetry) above the peaks
rivers meandering long zig-zag valleys
far horizons  far away
  
If you stepped close enough
you could see temples and little villages
(sure, the grecian urn)
people a quarter-inch high
walking over bridges
holding hands with their children
fishing from the shores
burying their dead

Stepping back, they disappeared again into a greater reality
like the molecular swarm which is your hand

All the other rooms featured European aristocrats
whose micro thoughts were visible
staring their importance out
framed in ornate inordinate  gilt
with little more than a column in a background
to suggest they ever inhabited anything so lowly as a world

StephanPoems