The China Man

There once lived a China man,
Not chinese, a china man,
His hands were oh-so-hard.
But when he broke,
and became but shards,
His hands, I saw, were far from sharp.
They were china hands, not chinese hands,
Their texture was not like silk.
Ragged, yes, and rough enough,
But much like words, they were blunt when sharp.
They were, I'm sure, like all things glass,
Made of pain and fragile past,
So that when they broke, they awoke,
Memories that had long been ghosts,
And now, newly born, they made soft,
The porcelain womb of the shattered sop,
The sop who once was a man,
A sorry affair, known for his hands,
And when he broke his hands awoke,
Memories that reshaped his worth,
And now the broken china man,
Sits on my desk,
Without his hands.