I often return to the Great Wall

Countless times in my sleep

It is not the same wall

As the postcards and the photographs

The great northern stone border

But the wall that lies distributed

Across the Chinese landscape

Beyond the horizon of the ocean

And when I often wake

I find myself  wondering

In ceaseless reverie

Where we have been

And where we are

And where we are going to next

I struggle for a foothold

Upon its stones

And whenever I return

To the land beyond the Great Wall

Again and again

Where the journey never seems to end

I hark back to lost moments

Friends and faces

Banished to the past

And though we are now

On the other side of the world

A small part of ourselves

Remained somewhere beyond

The Great Wall

Lost in the remote interior of an ancient land

It returns in an early morning phone-call

The irregular letter in broken English

The Great Wall is greater than a mere dream

It is more than a brick and stone construction

It is a memory, a dream, a hope

It lies in the land and the blood of an entire nation

Composed of the dust, the clay, the bone and stone

Built by the fate of the common people

In the history and memory of an ancient civilization

The Great Wall beckons our return

Like a ghost from beyond

That calls out in the night

The Great Wall Revisited

Trails in the Snow

1991-1993