Travel to a Mountain Inn

What did it feel like
To live in a tradition
More than a thousand years old

But without dramatic change
Of technology,
Of transportation,
Of the means of subsistence?

The dynasties came and went.
The burial mounds grew grass.
Poetry filled up with loss,

With antiquity,
But still you ate the same grains
And melons grown the same way,
And still you went on horseback.

The wild places stayed
Wild or grew wilder.
You recited the classics
Written in an ink still made.