One afternoon the last week in April



Showing Kai how to throw a hatchet



One-half turn and it sticks in a stump.



He recalls the hatchet-head



Without a handle, in the shop



And go gets it, and wants it for his own.



A broken-off axe handle behind the door



Is long enough for a hatchet,



We cut it to length and take it



With the hatchet head



And working hatchet, to the wood block.



There I begin to shape the old handle



With the hatchet, and the phrase



First learned from Ezra Pound



Rings in my ears!



"When making an axe handle



the pattern is not far off."



And I say this to Kai



"Look: We'll shape the handle



By checking the handle



Of the axe we cut with—"



And he sees. And I hear it again:



It's in Lu Ji's Wên Fu, fourth century



A.D. "Essay on Literature"-—in the



Preface: "In making the handle



Of an axe



By cutting wood with an axe



The model is indeed near at hand."



My teacher Shih-hsiang Chen



Translated that and taught it years ago



And I see: Pound was an axe,



Chen was an axe, I am an axe



And my son a handle, soon



To be shaping again, model



And tool, craft of culture,



How we go on.





