After the Last Dinasty Reading in Li Po how "the peach blossom follows the water" I keep thinking of you because you were so much like Chairman Mao, naturally with the sex transposed and the figure slighter. Loving you was a kind of Chinese guerilla war. Thanks to your lightfoot genius no Eighth Route Army kept its lines more fluid, traveled with less baggage so nibbled the advantage. Even with your small bad heart you made a dance of departures. In the cold spring rains when last you failed me I had nothing left to spend but a red crayon language on the character of the enemy to break appointments, to fight us not with his strength but with his weakness, to kill us not with his health but with his sickness. Pet, spitfire, blue-eyed pony, here is a new note I want to pin on your door, though I am ten years late and you are nowhere: Tell me, are you stillmistress of the valley, what trophies drift downriver, why did you keep me waiting? Stanley Kunitz