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them out, they shut us out.

Even Canada, even Mexico.

(But here’s a deal, brokered by our office

of Homeland Security: 39,000

visas back to China for aliens and/or

refugees. Can you trust that?)

Wait in line at the Applications window,

come back next week to Payment,

then Pick Up. In plain sight is money

heaped on a table, piles of banded bills

and loose bills. We’re the rich; we saved up

for years, for lifetimes, able to afford

travel to the other side of the world.

The form asks for one’s “Chinese name.”

At last, I’ve got a use for the Chinese name.

Space to write it 2 different ways:

characters and alphabet.

Hong Ting Ting. The poet Liu Shahe,

who sings Walt Whitman, sang my name,

“Tong Ting Ting, the sound of pearls,

big pearl and little pearls falling

into a jade bowl bell.” His fingers formed

pearls and dropped them into his cupped hand.

Now Wittman writes his Chinese name:

Chung Fu. Center Truth. When I first

imagined him, I gave him that name

as a brother name to my son’s,

Chung Mei. Center Beauty. My son,

child of Center Nation and Beautiful Nation.

Hexagram 61 of the I Ching

is Chung Fu, Center Truth. Don’t

believe those who tell you Chinese

have no word for truth. (Ha Jin

told me “we” have no word for truth,

nor privacy, nor identity.) Truth’s pictograph

is the claw radical over the child radical.

Americans understand, eagle snatches

Truth in talons. But to the Chinese,

the brooding mothering bird’s feet gently

hold the hatchling’s head. A cap of eggshell

clings to baby Truthie’s fontanel.

The superior person broods the truth. And if

his words are well spoken, he meets with assent—

dui dui dui dui—at a distance

of more than 1,000 miles. We won our visas.

Our names are legal, and we win countries.

Though we Chinese and we Americans

shouldn’t need passports and visas

to cross each other’s borders and territories.

President Grant and Emperor Tongzhi

signed a treaty giving freedom of travel—

“for purposes of curiosity, of trade, or

as permanent residents.” The right to curiosity!

Curious Monkey waves the Burlingame Treaty

under the noses of officials at every checkpoint,

and is let through. I, though, am nervous

at Passport Control. When I was arrested

for demonstrating at the White House, I couldn’t

find my I.D., couldn’t be booked

properly. “Overnight in the big cell

for you tonight.” I phoned Earll in California.

He tore the cover off my passport,

and fed it through the fax. I watched

the copy arrive at Federal prison—an illegible

dark zigzag mackle. I’ve glued

the little book back together along

its stitched spine. Crossing any border,

I’m nervous, it’ll fall apart. I’m nervous,

I have relatives in China. My actions and words

can endanger them. And I have relatives who

work at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory;

you lose your job if you have foreign family.

Wittman is all-American; no

relatives anywhere but the U.S.A.

Goodbye, Husband. Goodbye,

Wife of almost all my life.

Goodbye, my one and only child.

Now, they are in my arms.

Now, I turn, they go. Zaijian.

Joy kin. Ropes, veins, hairs

of chi that root the leaver to home pull,

stretch, attenuate as we move apart.

The red string—I can feel it. Can’t

you feel it?—has tied us espoused ones

ankle to ankle since before we met,

before we were born, and will connect

us always, and will help us not to miss

each other too much. Westward East.

Facing west from California’s shores,

Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound,

I, a child, very old, over waves, toward the house of maternity, the land of migrations, look afar,

Look off the shores of my Western sea, the circle almost circled …

Wittman is going to China for the first time.

I have been 12 times, counting

Hong Kong and Taiwan as China.

Long having wander’d since—round the earth having

wander’d.

Now I face home again—very pleas’d and joyous.

(But where is what I started for so long ago?

And why is it yet unfound?)

But I did not wander, never

wandered, and never alone. I have responsible