The Chinese Lamp

I was travelling through the country

That was once East Turkestan,

Keeping my western mouth shut in

The province, Xinjiang,

I wasn’t going to linger there,

I had planned to head due east,

And follow the Western Wall to where

They spoke my Shanghainese.

 

They spoke a myriad dialects

All over Xinjiang,

There must have been forty languages,

And I didn’t know but one,

I had to get by with signing ‘til

I wandered in through the trees,

Into a tiny village where

A man spoke Shanghainese.

 

He stood in front of a tiny shop

That was selling drink and dates,

And something evil that looked like worms

All white, and served on a plate,

He said, ‘Ni Hao’, and ushered me in

And I took what I could get,

Shut my eyes and shovelled it in,

I can taste the foul stuff yet.

 

But there in the back of the tiny shop

Were a host of curios,

Most of them antique statuettes

The sort that the tourists chose,

But up on a shelf, I saw a lamp

Covered in grease and dust,

I said, ‘How much do you want for it?’

‘More than your soul, I trust!’

 

I said, ‘It looks like Aladdin’s Lamp,

But that was the Middle East!’

He shook his head and he said to me,

‘Aladdin was Chinese!

His palace used to be over there,’

And he pointed out to a mound,

A hill of rubble and pottery shards

That covered a hectare round.

 

He said he’d fossicked the ancient mound

And found all sorts of things,

Cups and plates and statuettes

And even golden rings,

But the thing he found that intrigued him most

Was the finding of that lamp,

He’d dug it out of a cellar there

That was cold, and dark, and damp.

 

And there by the lamp was an ancient scroll

With instructions in Chinese,

‘Don’t rub the lamp for a trivial thought

For the Djinn will not be pleased,

There are seven and seventy wishes here

Then the Djinn’s released from the spell,

But if you should wish the seventy-eighth

Then you’ll find yourself in hell!’

 

‘So how many wishes have now been wished,’

But the old man shook his head,

‘If I knew that, would I still be here,

I would rather this, than dead.’

He said that he’d been afraid to wish

For the lamp was ancient then,

Had passed through many since it was new,

Back in Aladdin’s den.

 

I offered to give him a thousand yuan,

But he shook his head, and sighed,

‘I’d rather keep it a curio,

It’s just a question of pride.’

I raised my bid, ten thousand yuan

And his face broke into a smile,

‘For that I would sell my mother’s hand,

And she’s been gone for a while.’

 

I paid the money and took the lamp

Then wandered into the street,

Held my breath and I thought of death,

And then of my aching feet,

Shanghai was a couple of months away

If I walked as the rivers flowed,

So I rubbed the lamp and I made a wish,

Woke up on the Nanjing Road.

 

It only had taken a minute or so

To travel a thousand miles,

I put the lamp in my haversack

And warmed to the Shanghai smiles,

I had a meal, and rented a room

And fell in bliss on the bed,

What I could do with another wish

Was the thought that entered my head.

 

I’m writing this by the flickering light

Of a candle, stuck in the lamp,

All I can smell is candlewax

And the air in here is damp,

I rubbed the lamp and I made a wish

But smoke poured out of the spout,

The Djinn took off with a howl of glee,

There’s no way of getting out!

 

David Lewis Paget

Reviews

[Claire in VA]

Your poem is excellent! My only complaint
is that it ended!

I Iove the setting. I assume that your stay
in China influenced this write. Being on
the other side of the globe, tales set in
Asian countries interest me greatly.

The narrator has incredibly good luck
when he finds the lamp. I guess his
luck ran out with his second wish.

Very humorous finale.

Thank you for sharing great poetry with us.

[Daniel Sala]

Very good, nice work, a complete tale with a funnily unfortunate ending.

[TPK Stories]

Another great tale David.

[emmajoy]

How on earth do you do this, time after time.. get IT right, that is! You create meter/metre so cleverly and wisely! As for your themes, seems you discover them in the four corners of the wind, the world, your shelves, etc., David. This has a flow, a slightly extra 'sound'', sometimes an extra word here or there but that's repeated throughout .. maybe an experiment? (A successful one). So approve the thought of a rummage in an old shop.. it must have a billion secrets for you to explore! The ending was a surprise, made me laugh- your new year has begun with a giggle!

[Linda Marie Van Tassell]

When I first started reading the meter seemed off to me; but after a secnd start, it was fine. I love how you turned a middle eastern tale into a Chinese tale. In one way or another, greed always traps the wisher inside of a lamp. Most often known as life, sometimes the wishing comes without light.

Great job! Happy New Year!

[Marie]

Fantastic. He caught himself in the lamp. He certainly was pushing his luck when he made that second wish.