Our Own Atrocities On The Other Side Of The World Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Relaxing and arguing non commital with my wife,
Does this mean I am approaching my middle years while
In China—
The air here is terrbile,
But when going out on the street, say to the post office
Where my wife can pay the month’s utility bill
While her parents are in the hospital,
It is like going to the moon:
It cannot be properly discribed—
The trash in the gutters,
The wild flea-bitten dogs:
The little shops, row by row—
Selling every parts of ducks and pigs and rats and eels:
It is fabulously unbelievable,
And what is most remarkable is that I and my half blood
Son remain the center of attention—
While everyone is looking at me, my extraordinarily
American-cut with super hero, balloonings, I try to
Take it all in: but it is impossible
And too much to describe to my imaginary friends:
On the suburbs of Shanghai, coughing, polluted,
I am ringed in a kind of fancy
And tonight, because I cannot sleep and having drunken
So much Chinese wine, stronger than American liquor,
I am telling you, because I am feeling warm
And thus must say something about the unbelievable
Monsters and their dirty fictions as they try to mirror our
Own atrocities on the other side of the world.