Goodbye to Suzhou

Back in late April, I wrote a song about leaving Suzhou, as I did in actuality yesterday. It features some pretty fast finger picking, with a melody that echoes Pachabel’s Canon (though here in the key of C). The title is “Goodbye to Suzhou,” and it expresses an anticipatory grief over parting from what I’ve come to like about living in China. Maybe the lyric is a little sentimental, but it has some nice imagery, too.

In about an hour, I composed parts for two guitars, bass, and two voices, along with the lyric. Creativity like this is truly is a gift. I don’t know where the song came from; I only know it came to me. I say this not because I think the song is great but instead because I partake in the wonder of making something out of nothing, as all creative people do. In this small way, if only for a moment, we are like gods of a lesser order.

I’m leaving Suzhou today
with a box of words
and pockets full of blossoms
such as friends
whose fathers worked the land
with weathered hands
that are as wise as Lao Zi.

Goodbye to Suzhou--
I won’t see you anymore.

I’ll remember women’s slippered feet
walking on the stone streets
by the water
and how the sunlight
wedded with the stones
and sparkled noontime
in a boatman’s eyes.

Goodbye to Suzhou--
hello to Baltimore.

In Maryland, there’ll be
baseball games and crab cakes,
shopping malls and car jams on the beltway
and addicts staring
with their jaundiced eyes,
standing on those
hope-deserted corners.

And I’ll dream of Suzhou
on the streets of Baltimore.