Xue Di

from Flames

Shore
The small path leading to lakeside emerges on water. On my way I want to collect time and smiles. Vision glides across sky's green gallery. Honeycomb, that distant setting sun its buzzing wings spread across water, tickle me. Dusk unfolds gently before me. I leisurely finger its colors. Its shadow tries to whisper in my ear, breathy ripples across my chest. Grass deepens green. Crickets in my quiet waiting sing toward the night about my age. Meandering footpath on the water: absentmindedly I gather fruit bobbing among lotus leaves. Swaying shadows of lotus pods nuzzle my face. By water's edge I hover, vultures one after another circling in my skull release me, disperse toward the forest. A long bench, elegant, settled. In encircling moonlight about to toll, the bell of pure fragrant youth. Years soften. Into trees of fluttering lotus flowers, again and again I recite my loneliness. I tear verse from my fingertips and scatter them; light littering shade. Enraptured, I surrender: recline in a boat drifting across the green, searching in water for trails weaving between the stars ...

Frenzy
Let me turn these insanities into lines of poetry for you. When you first saw his dark shadow: your eyeballs unbridled, hoof-beats racketed in skull's canyon. Let me use words to ravage the wild beast lurking on the shores of my streaming blood, then throw the lines at your feet. Witness their primordial ferocity. Let me use my pen to impale onto paper primitive urges creeping behind your mountainous eyes. These papers spread toward you like a road. You leave behind an animal's scent when you run.

Let me sink my incisors into your collarbone. Who can lift up this sticky sentence? These words throng. We all are scrawled by a river. Conviction shipwrecked and drifting; stanzas sink, saturated with desperation. Madness motionless in shadows, winding around drowned legs, tangling any hope of the living. In voiceless combat, both sides suffer. Panting savagery through flaring nostrils, I provoke you. I use poetry to plaster the world's splintered limbs. I scourge your face with my affliction. That filthy yellow water may overflow in your life, breaking against dikes and dams of reason, nourishing soil, nurturing crops and humans. We are mud or awns of wheat or grotesque cries of birds hauling delicate shackles. We always must write poetry, singing praises to the sun or another unfamiliar constellation. Let me disgrace you with derangement gushing consumptively from my throat. Words order themselves before you. They surround my heart; blood coagulates under their constriction. At the center of that clot, in heat an animal roars. Do you see its radiance? Do you see those white birch trees, they lean on each other like my lines of verse, linked by grief, line by line. Like me, anxious, hearing butchered tree roots regenerating in my words; like that hand that signs my death sentence, scrawling on my hysteria's ashes: Love

Flames
Why revere poetry? Because of what it reveals. Like life's flame at the center of the spirit, each word of a poem blazes, illuminating our darkness, illuminating an ancient consciousness, oppressed hope and instincts choked by reason. Pure works transfix us, deliver up real life. Behold! We are dumbfounded ! But the other kind depictions of sound and fury, of shallow masochism, hypocritical history and false vision all show me a swindler spouting clever rhetoric and charming words, or a craftsman tinkering with his tools, conniving with delight. It makes me see buzzing neon, and below, those who sniff out their dinners like feral cats. I know my silence threatens to submerge me in such putrid tidewater. But patience will again lift me out with the palm of its hand, strip away the sewage and decayed leaves smothering my body. Still, how many aeons has this submersion retarded a country's art? How long until it erupts, drowning us all, because we do not cry out? This is cowardice and profanity. This is complicity with deception. So I speak. Poets! Write the whispers of your soul. Write what Power prohibits. Write yourself: your filth, your transgressive desires, our hubris, dreams realized and dreams deferred. Poets, transcribe each breath that carried you here. Write yourself: your blood, your bones, your tattered flesh. These biting flames course through my sinews and cortex, in each word they burn. Let my poetry extract birth and death from my pulse, witness scarlet blood and dreams, see glorious ages of man all to console my short, wandering role. This path, unburdening line by line, saves face

before my father and mother birth givers and my ungiven son. Readers! As tides of material yearning surge, what stars wink out in our dark hearts? I weep. My poems grasp for others like me if but to hold them. Can it be, only in memory we hear echoes of before? Can it be the only way to discover our dreams is to follow images sparkling in childhood eyes? According to vistas from our toddling days, we dream of moments not yet crossed? Can it be, all is irreversible? Only because we are growing old, all of us are growing old! Toxins saturate 'our' bodies. Legions of unknown diseases lie in wait, launch our spirits to war. This corporeal battle aborts poetry, distracts us from going beyond ourselves. Is it so? Animals and plants shame us, so we destroy them. And poets? They can only sing in dreams and letters, ferociously beating their chests: People! What trash! I fear somewhere my son's unborn eyes chastise me. Enough! All I can do is reach into my soul and write it exhaustively out. Day and night I listen to its voice piercing the center of the flame. It will torment me, kill me; in my quest, exposed! It robs me of a lover and progeny that is choosing poetry for a wife; my flesh, proof of its own rotting. As for spirit, it suffers evil's retaliation. But with last breaths I will cry: My lines, my time, all were real, all were mine!

Translated by Alison Friedman

Xi Chuan

Close Shots and Distant Birds

Birds
Birds are the highest creatures we can see with our naked eyes. Now and then, they sing, curse, fall into silence. We know nothing about the sky above them: that is the realm of irrationality or of huge nihilism. Thus birds create the boundary of our rationality and the fulcrum of cosmic order. It is said that birds can behold the sun: whereas we will feel dizzy in one second, and six seconds later go blind. According to mythology, Zeus presented himself as a swan to fuck Leda; God occupied Mary in the semblance of a dove. There is a line from the Book of Songs: Heaven let its black bird descend, and the Shang dynasty thus came into being. Although some experts argue that this black bird is nothing but the penis, still let's forget it. Coming to own the world as a bird is a god's

privilege; as is an emperor's disguising himself as attendant to pay a private visit. Hence we may say, God is used to condescending. Hence birds are the mediators between earth and heaven, counters between man and God; and the stairs, passageways, that form quasi-deities. Duckbills copy the appearance of birds; bats fly in a birdlike way; and clumsy fowls could be called degenerate angels. The birds we are singing for their gorgeous feathers, their light bones are half-birds: mysterious creatures, seeds in metaphysics.

City
Here is the rising of a city: at the beginning there is trade; there are people exchanging salt, leather, grain and luxury goods. Those who came from distant places set up the first block of shanties; then more shanties with streets, cellars, squares, toilets and sewers between and under them. Some find work for themselves right there, in manufacturing and processing. When dusk comes, restaurants and brothels shoot up out of man's desire for entertainment. This results in city-civilization. The rise of cities is different from that of villages: people inhabiting one village usually come from one family, regarding the father as king (sometimes a certain village may develop into a city, but actually it is a village enlarged). But a real city is a choice freely made by man and woman, originating from different families and tribes. A mixed inheritance brings ideas and virtues which divide into schools later; the same brings crime and conflict which require courts of justice and jails. People have to compromise to preserve their existence as a whole. Then one day, a stranger arrives. He sets down his small valise, walks from the inn to the square blowing a bugle, and proclaims to the baffled audience that he has come to be the head of the city as per heaven's intention; and people should show respect, protect him and pay him taxes.

Fire
Fire cannot illuminate fire; what is illuminated by fire is not fire. Fire illuminated Troy, fire illuminated Emperor Qing Shi's face; fire illuminated the crucible of the alchemist, fire illuminated leaders and masses. All these fires are one fire element, passion predating logic.

Zoroaster only gets it half right: fire has to do with the bright and clean, as opposed to the dark and foul. But he neglects the fact that fire is born of darkness, mistakenly opposing fire to death. Because fire is pure, it is faced with death; because fire is exclusive, it tends to be viewed as cold-blooded and evil. People usually see fire as the spirit of creation, not knowing it is also the spirit of destruction. Fire is free, paternal and holy: without form, without mass, it neither spurs the growth of any life, nor supports any standing object. Just as those full of ambition must give up hope, those who accept fire must accept great sacrifice.

Shadow
As I grow up, I begin to have a shadow. I cannot ignore it, unless it merges into another, greater shadow night. But whose shadow is night? The earth casts its shadow on the moon, hence the lunar eclipse: the moon casts its shadow on the earth, hence the solar eclipse. All of us live in shadow. On the other side of the shadow lies fire; and shadow gives us our only basis for measuring the sun. In daily life, because there is only one sun, nothing can have multiple shadows; as for our souls, the shadow is the sum total of desire, selfishness, fear, vanity, jealousy, cruelty and death. Shadow endows things with reality. To strip a thing of its reality, one only needs to strip it of its shadow. The sea has no shadow; therefore it feels like an illusion. Objects in our dreams have no shadow; therefore they form another world. Thus people have every reason to believe that ghosts have no shadow.

Peony
Mu-dan, the peony, is a flower of hedonism: it differs from the rose which has a double nature, flesh and spirit; whereas the peony has only flesh, just as the chrysanthemum has only spirit. Because of this, the peony doesn't exist before it blossoms or after it fades away. Liu Yuxi's line: The peony is the only national beauty that gives sensation when it opens. It is the sort of plant that can hardly be redeemed, its fleshy glamour hardly rejected. Those of aristocratic families love its secular beauty, whereas ordinary people enjoy its exuberance. In the novel The Lost Voice of the White Snow it is said the peony flower represents property during springtime. Along with this sentence is also: being pricked by an emerald hairpin, the peony blossom becomes more beautiful. Obviously, the peony here must be taken as symbol

of female genitalia. Peony, mu-dan, means male; dan in the ancient syntax was a mined red stone. Etymologically, mu-dan, the peony, is a male flower. Its sexual genre was changed purely because of its natural suggestiveness. In order to enforce the identity of king of flowers upon the peony, and to inject spirit into its flesh, someone invented the story that Empress Wu Zetian once ordered all flowers growing in the Upper Garden of Changan City to be forced to blossom in winter, and the peony was later banished and exiled to the city of Luoyang for its disobedience. It's a pity that the peony didn't change into a rose under the magic of this legend. It is the nature of the peony to despise the rose. It seems a flower that would be part of the Renaissance, but actually was not.

Poison
Things poisonous are beautiful and dangerous. We may transpose this sentence into, beautiful and dangerous things are poisonous. Both sentences consequently produce the concept of beauty/snake. Usually poisonous things themselves are not evil: datura, oleander, cobra, are parts of nature, but since their toxin has been extracted by pharmacists, some bad eggs succeed in realizing conspiracies and some good eggs succeed in dying. Let alone the practical use of poison it usually divides people into poison throwers and victims, or people in front of the curtain and the ones behind it. It also prods politicians with a stick evolved from fairy tales. As a result, murder cases take on aesthetic meanings. Poison takes a skull as its token. It has the potential to change the environment and human psychology: a room with poison deposited in it is different from other rooms; and a man who has poison in his pocket could be either a devil or an accomplice. As for those who commit suicide with poison, I almost have nothing to say except for one thing: that is, before they take poison, each of them has flawed, becoming transformed into two persons. One has become a poison thrower at oneself. Thus we may say that all suicides committed by means of taking poison are essentially conspiratorial.

Cards
The essence of inventing a game is to invent a set of rules and to leave room for contingency in which to entertain the players.

So far as playing cards is concerned, people actually play with the unknown, according to the rules. They are mysterious, the diamonds, hearts, spades and clover, and it is impossible that they stand for nothing. I guess those figures, the Caesar, Charlemagne, Alexander the Great, King David, Jacob's wife Rachel and the heroine Judith, do want to say something to the players. Each time when cards are shuffled again, history is again fabricated; and who dares to say that history is not a made-up story? Constant changes take place during the process of fabrication. Thus cards are also obtained to practice divination. Intellectuals take card-playing as the lowest game among games of intelligence, since it requires little intelligence and good luck is far more important. There are times when you win; your opponents do not praise the good work you have done, but the good luck you seem to have. That they are not convinced makes you unsatisfied. So you play again, and this time you might fall into the trough from the wave's crest. Isn't it the cards' entertaining themselves by making vengeful mockery of the players?

Bicycle
The mechanism of a bicycle works in a simple way, but it is not inferior to any other advanced means of transportation in displaying the beauty of mathematics and physics. Its roller chain and cranks have become plundered possibilities through people making brand-new designs built upon bicycles and resorting to other principles. This is nothing but the fulfillment of an idea. We are ready to take it as a lively body with a soul in it, since it is fatally connected with our view of the world, and even defines our way of living. It reminds us of some interesting figures, like the late-Qing dynasty prostitute Sai Jinhua, and the socialist hero Lei Feng. The developing level of our social economy, culture and political system is marked by the bicycle. Explanations of the word bicycle in dictionaries should be enlarged by adding self-reliance, self-transportation. Two wheels and a framework might compose another machine, yet the bicycle coalesces our random thoughts: sometimes when I am riding my shabby bike down the crowded street, I feel I am going to take off with everyone watching into the azure of the sky, if I speed up a little bit.

Silver

Do you know silver has been humiliated? It was unimaginable that it would be used for purchase, investment, compensation and gambling. People humiliate it by underestimating its value, as if it were not a touchable moon, the solidity of waves, the roof of our dreams or a village for us to feel nostalgia within. Ancient Egyptians were more clever than we when they showed their respect for silver. During the years between 1780-1580 B.C., Egyptian law stipulated that silver was two times more valuable than gold. But it doesn't mean that silver was not humiliated by being treated like this. The fact is that silver has nothing to do with gold. If we say that gold is hot with hubbub, then silver is cool with silence. There are blood relations between silver and copper and iron. In Sanskrit, the word silver means brightness, so when people humiliate silver, they do the same to all bright things. Silver is healthful because it is good at killing germs; silver is generous because it functions to conduct electricity. Yet it has been humiliated. People do not understand it at all; and silver in its loneliness fells shy about sighing with the interjection: oh!

Ghosts
Death is a private affair for the dead. It is the same thing for the living when it acts upon one through ghosts. I am not talking in the vein of metaphor-usage: it's an old idea that without ghosts the concept of death would be void. Then, will we be lucky enough to witness apparitions? Will ghosts die? If I turn out to be a ghost, will animals experience their transformations? I can hardly imagine that ghosts would like to be quiet, sit for ten minutes or have a sleep. That we are afraid of ghosts means childhood has been prolonged in our bodies. What makes us uneasy is not the evil of ghosts (perhaps most of them are kind). It's the unknown that frustrates us. We don't feel fearful of ancient ghosts (Xiang Yu or Caesar). The dreadful ghosts compose a portion of our lives. Anthropologists say that the total population of humans who have gone is 79 billion, which could be interpreted as our sharing the world with 79 billion ghosts. If there were no ghosts then heaven and hell would be abolished; and logically good people wouldn't be comforted and bad ones would go unpunished. It's vulgar and unintellectual to say so, but we are afraid that we will be disappointed by disappointing ghosts.

Wind
The only lifeless movement on the earth, thus an eternal movement, is the wind. Strictly speaking, we can not see it; what we see is the floating dust, the turbulent clouds and the waving leaves. Although walking against the wind has nothing to do with evading death, walking with the wind does make us feel that life is something great. When we stop and stand in the wind, we can hear it skimming past our ears and come to believe in the existence of an objective world; but Buddhists that it is because of the movement of our hearts. Our hearts move always; but why is it that sometimes we cannot hear the wind? Between gusts of wind, the earth is silent, as if plants have ceased to grow and time has been killed. Only when the wind rises again, life glitters again. So it is reasonable to say that it is the wind that promotes life. Paul Valery said, The wind is rising: you must try to live! Alas, wind, windfall, windbreaker, windmill, wind furnace, wind vane . . . all those have things to do with the wind, also with us. But we are not the wind. Yet even without life, the wind ought to blow until the last day, if there is such a day.

Ruins
Eulogizing the sublime form of a ruin is the same as eulogizing an atrocity, and looking with indifference at that lofty form is the same as admitting that we lack the ability to be affected by it. The reason we have these two difficult states of mind when facing a ruin is that a ruin's existence is vastly greater than ours; between us and ruins there is practically no proportion to speak of. Yet, even if we acknowledge our insignificance, ruins still refuse to act as people and receive us: a ruin is the home of phantoms, only they are qualified to loiter there, so it changes all who enter into ghosts. A ruin is not the same as a construction site: it has won the perfection and honor that things yet to be completed anticipate. Its stones that once stood are far more costly than stones that never stood; they collapse but in our minds are prepared whensoever to stand again. Times has weight; history comes at a cost. Ruins are the combining of roofs and the ground into one, ever taller green grass covers the traces of fire, the marks of sunshine and rainfall. Amid silent ruins, only the stone columns stand apart, talking to themselves that is the nature of a building, the essence of creation, the nature of the spirit of mankind.

Mirage
The refraction of sun-rays in air constructs a mirage, which could be taken as the best example to explain the way in which matter turns into spirit: look at spiritual houses, spiritual squares, spiritual wild lilies, one hundred and eight heroes from the Water Margins, thirty-six girlfriends of Jia Baoyu, etc. That's another kind of life, like something we occasionally recall, like a lonely city standing at the end of the road which we occasionally see. The mirage another way to put it is the castle in the air ignores laws and rules of the secular world, and drives people to the position of waiting to be selected. It belongs neither to the present nor to the past, nor to the future. Being a metaphor of our homeland and Utopia, it is disassociated from time. Its theological meaning: God has no bed in heaven. Its philosophical meaning: a blink is eternity. Its aesthetic meaning: only qualified persons are allowed to appreciate such distancing. Its ethical meaning: to pay close attention to the word happiness in your dejections and hesitations; that is happiness. A mirage is suggested by all pictures, poems and books. If you have never seen any mirage, you may imagine it via the rainbow.

Translated by Xi Chuan and Inara Cedrins

Zhai Yongming

Silence
There's always a butterfly calling her name in the night suddenly she comes, with a smile like quicksilver the moon is very cold, very ancient within her, already inborn endowed on the two of them as one, often I attempt, gloomily to fathom her gestures, but have nothing to show for it But you barely twenty, standing nailing this beautiful season to the inevitable sentence you still walk in that heartbreaking way as if declaring an acutely poisonous attitude You're calm like the countless beauties of a will-o'-the-wisp

your light renders the moon unable to cast down your shadow Full of life, and yet so amazed now who was it that silenced you? a clear gaze aimed at all things, but everything has left you more and more swallows build there nests in your house black opium poppies are hung in the windows as ornaments your eyes become a snare, packed full of black nights creeping oxalis plants wither in your hands How did she learn this art? She dies but leaves no trace, like the happy darting glance of October brimming with confidence, emotive, and yet abruptly silent eyes forever open, watching the sky

from Peaceful Village (a twelve poem cycle, 1985)

I'm nineteen, entirely ignorant . . . . . Who could have foreseen I'd develop into a disease? in Peaceful Village, 1974

The First Month

As if it had always existed, as if all was already in order I arrive, the noise has nothing to do with me it settles me into a south-facing wing My first time here I happened upon a pitch-black day everywhere there were footpaths resembling faces pale and lonely, the cold wind blew at a moment like this the fields of corn are stirred up I arrive here, I hear the howls from the double-fish star and the endless trembling of a night full of feelings Tiny haystacks scattered and solemn The sole fragile cloud, solitary as a wild beast approaches on tiptoe, reeking of foul weather Those who I come across become hearts worth knowing the long fishing rods slide across the water's surface, oil lamps flicker the hoarse barking of dogs gives one pause Yesterday the sound of a great wind appeared to comprehend it all don't let in the black trees

in every corner murderous thoughts take up their places enduring the moments spread over your body now unfettered I can become the moonlight In their dreams a married couple hears the patter of pre-dawn rain By the stone mill black donkeys discuss the tomorrow There, land of mingled dark and light you know all its years like the palm of your hand I hear a cock crow and the windlass of a well

The Twelfth Month

Now the time has come to leave Peaceful Village the mare's still stamping its black hooves a north-westerly blows over a no-man's land and a herd of calves thinks of war..... So far the empty form can't be identified the setting sun descends like pestilence, sitting atop the village the heart's wound like a tree the desires of white sap laid out by your hands, raised by your shout you look up and see a flying saucer, a fortuitous appearance you stealthily stroke the stone in your breast and kiss me as you leave the entire village suffers your gloom shoes full of sand, the smell of malt thick in the air the sun is high and cold with an effort you imagine it as a living thing with a brain an aging woman shakes the suffering fish In every corner, skulls full of dust an arid smile is revealed on your face, a dark swaying shadow The sound of footsteps rises up from beneath the earth, like flowing blood butterflies see their own reflections go seeking refuge in death Just like you, distance is the core of all things I'm still the loner from a strange land on the earth's surface From start to finish in this village where crows and sparrows are not heard At this moment my ears hear the old tones of birth A dull pain in my ribs a once-approachable time opens for me the great gates of night a girl stands in the gloaming Grey horses, grey shadows of people the sparks kicked up off the flagstones shine A nauseous sensation falls on the roof like rain An infant's dejection is born we leave

bearing unfathomable bodies of flesh and blood After all's said and done, I came here and was liked by others yet when I leave, I don't harbor good intentions smoke brings tears to my eyes, my gaze directed towards old wrinkles and the transmigrating part that suffers from sapped vitality

Translated by Michael Day

Chen Dong Dong

In 'Riding on Wine' Pavilion, Sitting Alone. How Should We Read Ancient Poems
On the river mist locks in a solitary sail. Dawn enters the temple; large red stones, damp, satiated, like leaves the autumn frost has left stained. The wind blows, a flower falls like a robin nesting in the hands of shadows. All this, these were all his lines of poetry. During the Song dynasty the sea fell and one saw mountain stones, an arid season, city buildings in a pall of dust. But I've passed through a night of heavy rain on the red stones, green leaves like countless fish that were near death soaked plump and new by the weather, and at this moment tree bark is still rough, floating in the pond unlike anything. Looking across the river, the afternoon Riding on Wine Pavilion sits silently clinging to the mountain; in the midst of all this I see a flock of fierce birds calling and ripping at the river's heart, wings like knives. We must have thoughts like knives too in Riding on Wine Pavilion. Su Shi's lines are of no more use.

I sit alone and begin to learn to use my own eyes to see how high the mountain, how small the moon. 1985

A Horse in the Rain

In the dark you pick up a musical instrument that's handy. You sit serenely in the dark, the sound of a horse comes from the far end. A Horse in the Rain This instrument is out of fashion, shining in spots like the red freckles on a horse's nose, flashing like the top of a tree. The first blossoming of the cotton rose, startles a few thrushes into flight. The horse in the rain too is doomed to gallop out of my memory like the instrument in hand, like a cotton rose opening in a warm fragrant night. At the other end of the corridor I sit sedately as if it has been raining all day. l sit serenely like a flower that opens all night, a horse in the rain. The horse in the rain too is doomed to gallop from my memory. I've picked up the instrument and softly play the song I'd like to sing. 1985

The Bus Comes out of the Mountains

The bus comes out of the mountains, the hot air rises did the years that grew in those black stones also have, overlooking them, a hawk, attracted by a snake plunging straight into the sea?

Today this bus is far from flying birds. The driver has urgent business and drives the bus, heaving like a river stag in those years when serpent-neck dragons traversed rivers, were there also vigilant eyes, closely following their prey waiting for a gun's report? One night, ahh, one entire night a whole night sitting serenely under a tree, I will think back on the bus that appeared out of the mountains. 1985

Translated by Michael Day

Yu Jian

from Watching a Documentary Film of Giacometti at Work

slowly gradually adding a kneading in here a squeezing out there building up the left a little pinching in one side a bit adding salt adding sugar adding clay in the emptiness his hand is holding on to something womb-wise something is about to be born from that place to grow and take shape here, it manifests itself a little there at another point it disappears the artist hesitates like a lion roaming at the edge of night gleaming it wants to come in its quarry begins in the shining gypsum darkness intervenes and on the other side there is bronze ultimately one of them in the emptiness fluttered its eyelashes another, however, stays buried beneath rock iron spectacle frames like Empire furniture you simply cannot budge the artist is exhausted joints ice-cold a battle with death 'To protect myself to support myself to sustain myself' apoplectic hands fondling a breast shameless hands chewed by the fire's sharp fangs hands probing moaning shaking caressing rubbing

like wind toying with an unpredictable tree there is something about to emerge to emerge something about to emerge gradually emerging this is not a formula in teaching material sound appearing once you've learnt about ears sentences appearing once you've learnt the tongue every time you must start from scratch every time is a pall of darkness his own hands, invisible every time he gets to work he has no idea never any idea what the next thing is that he has got to grasp hold of an iota of what? A? B? X + Y? or is it the moisture content? hands always empty always an ungraspable anxiety an insupportable anxiety an insistent but not long-lasting anxiety anxious that ability is not equal to ambition a strange bashfulness where is it he should let go? it won't do to be discouraged hardening too quickly he worries about cracks so many battles he has fought with those elements urging him to come too soon o but he has plenty of time he goes off to Paris without impatience he can work from morning to night work on the tops the bottoms sticking together then moving apart working on the backs fronts using hard and soft tactics tumescent places declivities dry and then moist a pairing of fast and slow searching hunting bending only to straighten out from shallow to deep from outside working in going in then coming out coming out only to go back in again he is a lover made of the flesh of spring-time and when he can move no more only then does he stop work and that's because God in His darkness has slammed a foot down on the brake there is something that props up the world this hollowed crone opens her shrunken womb once the shoulders have emerged the process should by rights result in the appearance of a proper head filled with meaning and promise but no there instead all you'll find is a small lump of bronze that looks like an error the end or just a beginning who knows? 2 July 2001

Translated by Simon Patton

Duoduo

I'm Reading
in November wheatfields I'm reading my father I'm reading his hair the color of his tie, the crease in his pants and his hoofs, caught in his shoelaces how he skated and played the violin too his scrotum shrank, his neck stretched to the sky for undue understanding I read how my father was a big-eyed horse I read how my father once briefly left the other horses his coat hung on a small tree and his socks, and hidden among the other horses those pale buttocks, like in an oyster stripped of its flesh the soap that women use to wash I read the smell of my father's pomade the smell of tobacco on his body and his tuberculosis, lighting up the left lung of a horse I read how the doubts of a boy rose from a golden cornfield I read how for me at the age of understanding it began to rain on the red roof where the grain was put to dry how in the sowing season the plow drew four legs of a dead horse the horse-skin like a parasol, and horse-teeth scattered all around I read faces taken away by time, one after the other I read how my father's history quietly rots underground how the locust on my father's body goes on existing by itself like a white-haired barber embracing a senile persimmon tree I read how my father puts me back once more into the belly of a horse when I am about to become a stone bench in the London mist when my gaze passes over men strolling down the street lined with banks . . . (1991)

Five Years

five strong drinks, five candles, five years forty-three years old, break out in a sweat at midnight the palms of fifty hands on the tabletop a flock of birds, fists clenched, comes flying from yesterday five strings of firecrackers in month five, thunder from five fingers but in month four four toadstools live off four dead horse-tongues don't die on the fifth five candles go out at five past five but the landscape screaming at dawn doesn't die the hair dies but the tongue doesn't die the temper rediscovered in the well-boiled meat doesn't die fifty years of mercury seep through the semen but the semen doesn't die the foetus delivers itself and doesn't die five years gone by, five years don't die in five years, twenty generations of worms all die. (1994)

Sun Wenbo

The Program
1 Leafing through the beautifully printed program, you see a fiction of night: moon like a face ravaged by cholera. He's sitting on a stone bench in the garden. Grief over the loss of his father stirs his soul as cheap liquor would. You see his depressed stare at the withered chrysanthemum. When the orchestra strikes up, he starts walking back and forth on stage. He sees you. You and he know what it means to define positions for the actors and the audience: confusion. 2 With one step, with just one step, you have crossed the audience's line. You have even seized the main character's role. You have taken his position now, and started on a path of revenge. You know better than he who the enemy is, you would almost madly shout the enemy's name. You, brandishing the sword that was once his, dash toward the high point of the stage. You are directing the extras, you want them to bring the enemy before you, you want to chop off his head right there.

3 Does he tolerate your behavior? He seems so dejected! He has quietly withdrawn to a corner of the stage, his hands restlessly tugging the edge of the curtain. What about the rest of the plot, how should it be handled? How will a larger scene combine with this scene to form a full-fledged act? He doesn't know now. How can the time of two hours be whiled away in only half an hour? And there should be schemes yet, and conspiracies, betrayal and someone's love. 4 Thereupon, time quivers in the crowd's eyes: clouds rush like mad dogs over the crowd's heads; the river falls, revealing glossy cobbles; bats at dusk swoop to and fro 'round humming electricity lines. Thereupon, you start stating details from a book: downcast, retroflex sounds in a sentence read out loud. They turn into a play within a play, on death, on narrative come back to life from death. Thereupon, 5 the crowd sees a shocking episode: in a busy streetcorner inn, a bunch of blind-drunken soldiers are loudly talking smut. Two of them get into a quarrel over comments made about a woman. This leads to knives being drawn, to the inn being smashed up as they fight. In this madness, all those present lunge into tangled warfare. And someone dies. Just how satisfying is this smell of blood? The audience is watching, wide-eyed and trembling with fear. 6 And the sentimental are now sobbing. And a woman bereft of her man has now fainted in her seat. Time seems to glide to one side now. You seem to walk into another life now. This daytime city let it vanish like froth, let it rise, let it rise. But not rise like steam, no, rise like a rocket, screaming and in flames. You are satisfied with those sobbing. As for the one that fainted, her you curse: you frail soul, what good is it that you exist? 7 Well what about him? He has left, in a gloomy state of mind. He has entered an out-of-the-way side street of reality. Under pale yellow streetlights, he walks with lowered head. The wind makes noises high above, like a thief lifting up a roof. He knows that to quit now means to quit forever. How

could one spend a lifetime inside a play? Wine on stage will not resemble wine for long. As he turns and strides into a small wineshop, he shouts: waiter, bring out the wine. 8 But you are drunk with being on stage. You're like the crown prince who sees the throne unoccupied. At this moment, what your eyes see is a scene sweeter than paradise: all of the extras are like stage props in your hand. You fiddle with them, as if fiddling with pencils. Chairs and tables talking? You make the chairs and tables talk. Can walls and trees walk about? You make them look like leopards on stage, and walk about. The stage in its greatness is a gorgeous dream. 9 But how will you make the final curtain fall? One climax after another has failed to warm the hearts of the audience, and pushed you to the center of excitement instead. In their eyes, all you see is the glint and flash of knives and swords. The music keeps working to construct a splendid paradise. Desire, swollen like bread, makes you reach out your hand time and again. You have forgotten yourself and forgotten him. You have become a usurper. You now think that whatever you lay hands on is real.

Translated by Maghiel Van Crevel

Ouyang Jianghe

An Apple Tree in Sunlight

I do not want to spy on flesh and bones shot through with illusions, let the black fruit scorch the afternoon, ten minutes of falling leaves, before slicing it open. I go, but I seem not to leave. Silence, a far-off tree, and more distant sunlight. Only a person with a shadow enters the water, arms like waves rock the summer. The day is ferocious and tilting. Ripeness starts from the end of words, until arid lips enter fruit, and in a single night, they all fall. Alive, awake, morose and carried away.

Everywhere a windless day and soft warmth. Skin walks in July's inflammatory malady, but the soul is not fervent. Inside the soul the world is nothing. Cut open from within, an aspect of memory. Childhood is distance and vain fantasy. We jump up, or climb many trees, then all fruit are beyond reach. Twenty years suspended, I lift my head. Nothing compares to the sight of flames of water, and placed inside it the insurmountable blade, even prettier, even colder.

Stand Firm

for Chen Dongdong

Out of sleep and into water. Drops of water fill the afternoon. From this I think of the ocean at rest. Children racing the tide, wanting to sun bathe. In the pieced-together light they wobble and bend. Bare-headed they enter a razor thinking the blade's edge does not touch the afternoon. I think their growth is very perilous. Out of my sleep and into a trance, a stretch of indulgence. Deferred, the children's one and only afternoon grows like this, swaying, without a bone. Wobbling is beautiful, but it's hard to establish character. The children mediate between bald heads and a razor. Since the dispersed afternoon is not standing, and the firm stand required for growth was never truly established, so, before going back to growing, return to a piece of land where you can kneel or lie down. No matter how unfathomable the source of the afternoon, it is only inevitable to those who sit still for life. Silently sit and write, and so establish the necessary kingdom. Then even man-children will be ruled by chance. Sept. 17, 1989 from 1989, To My Friends, a group of 9 poems

Dinner

After the spice hits the wind, the food entering the flames does not go into pig iron. At pot's bottom the snow gathered over the years rises from my finger tips to my head, dinner stretches out all the way into my dusk. Never again can there be dawn. Last night in a candlelit roadside diner, I had a double order of cabbage, spinach, raw fish-sticks and sausage. The beer suds hung in the air. After clearing up the bill, a handmade ivory toothpick between my loose teeth, slowly stirred in the depths of solar eclipse of time. Never again to be dawn. Late at night the noon news is rebroadcast, in it there is an obit: The dead died a second time. A brief stare, a gentle retelling, for those who have been listening and staring at me for a long time now. I have already paid the bill for the lost soul. Never again will there be dawn, but also no more black night.

Translated by Michael Day

Wang Xiaoni

A Birthday Night
The city! Neon lights flashing in the far-off square. The girls have come, wearing the colorful clothes of astronauts, I really can't remember the look of us as we bundled corn in the nests of snow. Like innumerable pigeons breaking up, the hot steam of the boiling dumplings and "The Blue Danube" drift about in my little room

filled with stacks of books and manuscripts. How is it that I can't walk into the hot steam? Everybody's kneading balls of sticky rice, all crowded onto the one stove-bed of brick. The fire in the stove dies, and an icy wind rattles doors and windows..... They say dancing helps one forget the past. Yet I stand by the window, watching incessantly the night sky in which three stars have yet to come out and the white intimate frost. They take their leave. A huge maple tree overlooks all this, the shadows of workers and university students, with deep dark looks. . . . They're going, laughing, knocking over snowmen children built beside the road..... In fact, no one can forget. On this birthday night, In a dream I see, bright and clear, the brook that runs through the village, the sun on a heap of kindling comforting and warm, the egg granny boiled for me sweet smelling and savory

Love

During that cold autumn Your hands won't soak in cold water Your overcoat will be pressed every night by me The thick white sweater I knit and never finish miraculously it is rushed out

into a time when it must be worn In that cold autumn you must be a neatly dressed person Talk and laughter leaves the good and the bad simultaneously at a loss Talking and laughing pulling us by the hand I insert us in every seam where there are people Originally I was to give birth to a bird with huge wings but right now I have to hunch my shoulders become a nest let those unwilling to raise their heads all see make them see the sky's great weight make them experience the atrophy of the heart That autumn day, so cold it moves me That harsh and resolute love in you and me February 1985

Many Many Pears

On the table the sounds of plants turn up smoothly the first time, like a baby, I've heard a plant's cry for help, standing on a burning bright red prairie now it's deathly pale In my home under a lamp shade like a tangerine your nimble and translucent hands wield a keen knife You can't peel a pear this way. Beside you I suddenly touch life's brute energy.

Fruit moves on trees free in the wind. You turn the knife, genteelly; You do harm, genteelly. .The giant form of the knife's shadow passes like the irrational limbs of our human kind I watch my hands and observe the other pair I'm fond of day and night But there are many many pears The tree nurtures them offhandedly and shakes them off A planet of many many pears people see them and cry out with thirst May 1988

Translated by Michael Day

Yin Lichuan

Old Man Zhang, Retired Worker

when he opens his eyes, in the ceiling there's a nail. he looks at it for ten minutes straight. as soon as he opens his eyes, he sees this nail, in the ceiling it's been like that for ten years straight. so ten years ago, the nail was in the ceiling not in his eye. back then, as soon as he'd opened his eyes, he'd go to work no, to the loo. now he doesn't go to work, and he doesn't need the loo, so once he's awake all he does is stare at the nail. the nail drops down, into his left eye. his left eye is kaput, and can't see the nail. his right eye ain't kaput and can't see the nail either, because the nail is now gone from the ceiling. there's a hole in the ceiling, just like in his left eye there's a hole. so at that hole in the ceiling he looks with his right eye. he'll be a long time looking before the alarm goes off, at the first glimmer of dawn

Man Throwing Up
the suit is black, with filth like cream at night a man squats in our midst and throws up quiet and coy, everyone's most pleased. neon dancing, women dancing drinks dancing, music stumbling one must be serious, thorough and fully committed. throw up some bones throw up some skin throw up some fluids throw up your last bit of vigor and do continue. the crowd is awfully pleased. and for the climax, pray throw in your heart and soul, my dear.

Wet with Paint

dedicated to so-and-so, so-and-so and so-and-so reach out your hands tear off your face measure its depth increase its strength rule out its filth master its truth shorten its length adjust its width reject its worth then put it back on (handle with care) fix its expression aim it at nothingness (that is, all mortal beings) and be so kind as to stick out your tongue to feel if your face is still there and whether or not it is there right where it is right then please place your palms together and you will certainly feel your own devout and valiant expression like a signboard wet with paint

on which everyone wants to leave a pawprint

Translated by Maghiel van Crevel

Yang Qian

Red paper napkin

Hold dessert on a red paper napkin in your palm add a jazz step, a chocolate bass, wear a brown smile. Smell the high aroma of a trumpet stutter step, twinkling mama and the first night with a lover's shadow. Not just that but hold it all in the palm of your hand mother's milk, whiskey, a cigar, a house in the suburbs, a mortgage, a big car. Red paper napkin in the palm of your hand touch the hammer and sickle march to the music, on the ticket the high sound of the trumpet blares the color of blood.

The man making roast duck comes

The man making roast duck comes, flying farther than the duck, from New England, or from a place still farther north, if you should ask his home town. The man roasting duck arrives carrying the duck in his luggage; to lighten the load, he puts his clothes in a travel bag. The man roasting duck lays down the duck in the kitchen sink; already frozen, the duck in the water slowly thaws; the man roasting duck tastes all the ducks in North America, but everybody tells him only Long Island duck is worth tasting. The man roasting duck explains that when cleaning the chest he must say "bye-bye" to French spices, explains, moreover, that he must use mortar and pestle to grind onions, ginger, blend star anise

together with salt to stuff into the duck's empty belly, as if applying Chinese medicine. The man roasting duck boils water in a huge pot, then tells the duck this is an unwilling baptism. To make this ritual even more authentic, the duck's two arms must also be stretched out in the shape of a crucifix, but the cross is Chinese bamboo. Baptize and anoint with oil at the same time, the bright, shiny skin of the duck, like the pure, tender countenance of a woman in a beauty salon, sprinkle brown sugar, blend with honey for fragrance. When the last cord is tied on the neck of the duck, the man roasting duck happily lays down the knife, the whip. There will be time to finish the job later. The man roasting duck easily puts together his sacred text, of which one must follow each step precisely. If you ask him where he got this sacred text, he will tell you from the roast duck expert in his home town Beijing.

Translated by Amy Liang and Steven Schroeder

Li Sen

In the Air
in the air, thought scatters like clouds higher than the perch of the owl I see one mandarin tree heavy with golden mandarins ripe mandarins old leaves summer ends I finally understand one must be like the mandarin tree grow leaves, bear fruit to endure summer in the air, anger turns to nothing anger is not thunder not a prison window at the still quiet riverside I see mountains of pebbles and sand washed up by water

make islands I finally understand if serene under water one will be washed up when the time comes

Snowfield
earth slowly whirling over the world's highest land each and every patch of quiet marsh grass mines of autumn grain upon grain of gold all at once between continuous snowy peaks conspicuously bright whose luminous pattern is this, imagined when the world was fashioned from the void? the public has already forgotten that ordinary artist right at this moment I see a vast snowfield in the heartland of Tibet I forever praise the places of the gods' activity I am busy at trifles most of the time it is far beyond the limit of my vision nor does it remain in my heart under lonesome

eagle's wings I recall countless dozing tigers, huge white stripes snow yellow bodies grass and trees blue shadows of clouds last night the crowd of lonely tigers disappeared in distant silent moonlight they did not again wake in that eternal light until sunrise I see them at the ends of the earth white fangs bared then again see iron forged heads buried in clouds I think to myself when those tigers open their eyes they will see how tiny I appear and will see the eagle that soars in my heart flies far away from living creatures under the iron curtain flies away from my cold heart But I know my weak palm can never stroke their back I cannot touch the stripes on the tigers

as I cannot touch a sunbeam cast onto a sunflower yet when they close their watching eyes as sun sets and their forms gradually disappear my soul like another true eagle that draws its wings together in the air descends from eternal height loses flight loses in heart and soul the transient field of snow until the empty dark life makes shows itself dead silence in stone

Teachings of the Buddha

study endless sutras, scan ageless prayer flags wash the stained root of wisdom, too much knowledge for a latecomer's basket to bear use a basket to measure the sea too late, for others have made the basket he will use it still to measure the sea but the sea is immeasurable still, the book says to measure the sea in a basket Buddha's teaching boundless, boundless the sea the key is a latecomer bound to use a basket to measure the sea bound to die, joy and sadness mingling because at least he has a basket

Translated by Wang Hao and Steve Schroeder

Li Nan

In the Wide World

In the wide world, I think to myself all beings are one. Birds and beasts, forests, still wilderness want to breathe, want to change inside quietly quietly . . . Silent star, sorrowing stone want to speak, want to weep, still want to scatter frost on empty wind.

Under Spring Moon Shining

You don't know, in the clamor of the city shopping for groceries, catching the bus, I am in a busy crowd, shadows driven by desire. Should Spring come, moon shining down, I also will look down to see sleeping grass wake. Should moon shine down, I would enter wilderness, calm the breath of an impatient world, console spirits countless as the stars. Should you become I, you would catch your breath. On one side dreams of your youth flare up. On one side snuff them out with life's ordinariness. Oh! Only what appears now inspires your faith. Spring moon shining, I, restrained, still touch everything Heart mixed with hunger and caution, a beautiful evening.

I Have Been in Many Places

I have been in many places: crops link farmhouses day follows night. Flowery clothes dry in sunshine on fences women winnow grain, sort beans ocher ox bends, drinks beside canal oh, it drinks earth's boundless suffering I love the lay of China's land because I have never traveled elsewhere. I love the sunset on that ditch and I love every dialect, the posture of peasants working the angle of bending grass a few burial mounds, people fading in the distance this is indeed my motherland: superstition and war stalk every inch of its skin these are indeed my people: in the wind, lives like reeds

Translated by Steve Schroeder and Amy Liang

Han Dong

For the Dusk or For Sorrow

Again the dusk arrives like this it sticks to the glass its appearance already not as lovely as the last I watch it earnestly of the things that move me only you remain but I cannot leave the window to let you in the sad face is outside the window but I can't let it come in I want to let it stay in silence its eyes still keep their sorrow I'm so familiar with this end of sadness like the dog-ears in a book in the places where my hand folded the corners are passages I've read

today I'm unwilling to open it don't welcome it in so that you won't be with no place to hide among the sound of my curses March 22, 1986

I Hear Cups
At this moment, I hear cups A series of exquisite sounds monotonous, detached At their clearest formidable or faint The city, at its brilliant core needs some of this luster Placed on a table some shadows are needed to heal their wounds The undulation of water, the dispersal of smoke They're used to the postures of night Purity and charm are still their estate they still have a one percent hope to lead a pure life In the distance true darkness howls but the cup still chimes clearly, intensely Held in a hand (1988)

A Paean to a Horse and the Sunlight

White sunlit sand and stone on the main road, shows everything already prepared people, animals, livestock all emerge out of a black dot grow hands and feet, bodies and wheels beneath the sun a horse hurries along

its mouth can't reach the green grass at its side its tongue does not crop leaves in the dust with the shadow of a branch the locust tree is on its back the four wheels behind it all run away in its original spot dust billowing as big as a house the horse head stretches out through a window with no frame Is a horse of another time the same horse The same open country, same road no branches of any kind or identifiable white clouds the main road lies clear at a glance, the horse motionless in its original place four legs like four match sticks standing straight I see this scene from the face of the moon at the same time it also remembers me in the large icehouse at a certain time, on earth it is a quiet noon and the motionless summer makes a burnt offering of a plough horse on a crackling tobacco leaf (1988-89)

Translated by Michael Day

Wang Jiaxin

Pasternak
I cannot visit your grave to offer flowers but am destined to spend all my life reading your poetry across a blizzard of a thousand miles days of celebration smashed to pieces, my soul trembling finally able to write what's in one's heart of hearts still unable to live what's in one's heart of hearts this is the tragedy we share your mouth is even more reticent, that is a secret of fate, you can't say it out loud all you can do is endure, endure, while your pen leaves ever deeper marks in order to obtain, you relinquish in order to be born, you demand that you die, die all the way this is you, from woe upon woe you find me

you test me, making my life suddenly painful from snow to snow, on the roaring, muddy Beijing buses I read your poetry, in my heart I shout out all those noble names all that exile, sacrifice, testimony, all those souls meeting in the quiver of mass all that glitter inside death, and my very own soil! tears in the eyes of Northern livestock maple leaves on fire in the wind darkness in the people's stomachs, hunger, how could I cast all that aside and talk about myself just like you must weather the attack of a blizzard yet more fierce so as to stand guard over your Russia, your Larissa, the beautiful, the one not to be wounded again Your adventure one dares not believe with the cold of snow all over, right in front of your eyes! and then, by candlelight, there's Levitan's autumn and in Pushkin's rhyme there's death and praise and sin spring is here, the bare black of boundless earth turn your soul toward all of this, poet this is happiness, it is the highest decree that rises from the heart it is not hardship, it is all this that you shoulder in the end still unstoppable, coming forth to search for us to dig us up: it demands symmetry or a requiem raging louder than its echo and we, how would we be worthy to appear before your grave? this is a crying shame! this is the Beijing winter in December this is sorrow in your eyes, inquiries, interrogation like a bell sound weighing down on my soul this is pain, this is happiness, to say it out loud I need ice and snow to fill my life December 1990

Translated by Maghiel van Crevel

Woeser (Weise in Chinese)

from Tibet Above

After a Few Years

After a few years You are at the original place I am at the opposite end ride on a plane in a car and I have already arrived there After a few years You have aged some I have aged some We seem to have been aging at the same time still young have tempers After a few years completely covered in dust my countenance is also lost Yet importuning poise I take some bones as jewelry Hang them on my chest as if without a second thought After a few years Your appearance so very clean An air of books as if seventeen as if the innermost teardrops added a luster that no one could out shine After a few years At last sitting together first a little distant then slightly closer The voices carrying on around us sights strange and colorful I wish to speak but refrain

You wish to speak but do the same What else can be said

Night in Lhasa
Night in Lhasa Lhasa! an imaginary night A few lotus flowers never blooming A few glasses easily broken A few people, this demeanor given by whom, make the flowing feast a paradise of self-exile Those unseen torrential tears are only for a loved one who cannot stay Lhasa! a sorrowful night A few bluebirds never singing A few coats covered with dust A few people, these diseases spread by whom, make the fleeting moments pools of drowned self-expression Those innumerable bewitching images cannot call back a lost loved one! Lhasa! a rare night A few affections never arriving A few bloodlines gradually intermixed A few people, like what kind of lightning, make the overarching pre-ordinances the fated chance of affinitive coalescence Yet, amidst that never ending transformation I wish you will ever be my loved one!

Evening on the Second of June

It was said to be evening, but the sky above the temple was especially bright Light shining for so long, and we just started to detect? Impressive and vulgar, isn't this the deepest aim of architecture like this? If it snows, the tribal mountains also have this appearance The temple usually looks like a mountain, something on top of the mountain silently growing, and finally is another name that

we have always said imperfectly This kind of transformation finely, suddenly, penetrates to the heart Fortunately, in our distant place like that temple, we gradually ascend in prayer In the passing days and months, in unending transformation I can see its immortal face Every time I pass by, its hidden deer on the peaks are tears and pleas Should one keep it all at an arm's length? If snow is falling, the mountains outside the window are like another country I am in this very evening, centered by the temple's inner space

Translated by d.dayton

Meizhuo

Songtsen Gampo : Statue of the King of Tubo

The iron hoof has burned on the fertile wild land But you, you have chosen the high plateau Like snow, like a hungry animal, like the intoxicating lake, to wander around you are destined for the grassland. The highland is also destined by the totem The numerous falling eagles The snow lion hidden in the forest. On the map, the wings and hoofs you have amassed shrink into a deep red color that no one can repeat The color of the sun, the color of blood, a color which the next generation will never understand and tolerate. Even among those who are not to endure, you have endured it. A long time ago, I was crossing the border of your territory spreading ancient love, looking for your beautiful blue sky. At last I understood, your lineage is our natural dwelling which we cannot change Before becoming proud I was haunted by feelings of inferiority. Tears are hindering my sight

I cannot see the charm and gentleness which is written a thousand times inside me I cannot see the magpie that consoles a lonely traveler. Year after year, you were alone at the edge of the highlands Charmingly naive you disrobe yourself amazing a race with your transcendence above the worldly You have taken a consort from far away, and received also your own people's venerated Buddha you defended the isolated life you also brought faith through simple prayer The country which has risen from the sea, without gaining strength has become old and feeble. Is the fire burning in your heart? Occasionally there are those who awake from your ancestral line Like you they wake and like you they fall, at that time you cannot talk, you cannot express the agony But I am in agony I repeat my confession many times I am in agony

Translated by Yangdon Dhondup

Yidam Tsering

What is True Cannot be Falsified

A black stone soaked in the river cannot be washed white. A white stone placed under the sun cannot be darkened. Even if they were buried in a pile of ash, The rain can still distinguish them! What is true cannot be falsified. What is false cannot be true. This indeed is not difficult to understand!

The Path

On the road I relish the speed of a horse's hoof. In the desert I admire the heavy load a camel carries. On the snow mountain that frightens the eagle, I see the yak with its tongue stuck out jumping like a fierce tiger from the ravine! Beneath the feet of those who struggle, there will always be a path! Please do not to think too highly of the one who dives into the water The necklaces of my ancestors are the corals deep in that sea!

A Reply
I praise the Amazon which sings the greatness of the native Americans. I gasp in admiration when the Nile accumulates the splendor of the 'Thousand and One Nights'. But I do not therefore blame at all my mother, Because the Yellow River and the Yangtse River give Gesar to a world of bright stars! The civilization of each nationality is not granted in a day! My responsibility is not to dress up that unfamiliar mother from the faraway place, But it is to transform my mother's milk into wisdom that composes epics!

Translated by Yangdon Dhondup

Baitao

from Arising from an Eagle

Tears I Have Inherited

Passed down by mothers the black-eyes contain the everlasting blue sky

A drop of tears dense with acrid salt Passing the sober four seasons I begin to near the embankment's whirling clouds, the end of the wilderness where sand drifts, and then An azure sea It spreads before me like a dream A sea pooled from a thousand tears churning all things Mist rises from the surface Is it the dust stirred by horses? Is it the milk spilled by cows? Why do I smell the sweet aroma of the wildernesses? Why do I smell the dampness of the earth? I will not tell that my blood from the grey wolf and white deer, as in a dream, is blue I also will not tell how many of my kinsfolk spend their whole lives pursuing water and pastures but there is only desert and thirst What has enticed them to live on? In the past, faraway there were people singing this kind of Mongolian song Now one after another they have all left burying their dream-song in a distant place There are only mothers, generation after generation Breast mounds, in the wilderness capturing pool after pool of bitter salt seas

Behold, a River of Lightning on the Xanadu Steppe

In the instant of meeting the flow of lightning Mongolians! A name explosive like lightning splitting the storm clouds. The path of flight across the sky was opened by them, the world of pounding hooves so far away These people who ride cloud horses,

ride the lightning that flashes in the eyes Passing highlands after highlands The lightning in the sky is but flowing water on the earth horses strong and swift, only in this one moment do my lightning dreams make the ancient river suddenly shimmer A person's life is most like the wildernesses' four seasons, the most beautiful and resplendent of dreams all gathering in autumn, that lightning of heaven and earth

The Golden Saddle

A ten-thousand mile journey, for the sake of this one saddle? Golden Saddle! Your past brilliance blankets many horsemen's skeletons Those who craft saddles with shaking hands and blood soaked hearts in the sandstorm cannot hear the horsemen's cries Those careening on horseback those leaping in the saddle have traveled very far On the sea of the Xanadu steppe the empty golden saddle sways in the rolling waves of grass Stars beneath the cold moon flicker and die in the ten-thousand mile highlands Kinsmen who polish the saddles use your two hands to tell me if the domain beneath the horses' hooves reaches the steppes Kinsmen who soar in the horses' gallop use your eyes to tell me when passing over endless sand dunes, just how far does the Tengger stretch? The golden saddle, an empty golden saddle, was here before I came

will remain after I go The golden saddle silently awaits . . .

Translated by d.dayton

Shama

from The Olive Tree in a Dream

The Olive Tree in a Dream Full of Fruit

The olive tree in a dream is full of fruit The fruit falls without a sound Smelling the aroma of buckwheat ale, makes one want to drink Upon drinking One thinks of the affairs of the ancestors They cut images of fire and fate Into the rock, and then Before it dance barefoot Silently murmuring Bitten by a wild boar the hunter lies on the hillock Looking at the fence at the bottom of the hill turning into arms Shaking like long bitter vines of thorns The setting sun Dowsing women into scarlet apparitions Old people on the edge of death See through the surroundings of emptiness Spilling the last bowl of wine Offering it to the mountain spirits The coffins of the dead are placed on the water Amidst prayers and songs Drift away as dream-souls At a moment like this Within the reddish brown haze of the Southern Highlands It is impossible to say clearly Whether the wandering clan belongs to the sun or the stars

If one makes a gesture A great deal of pain and pleasure Would again be like smoke and clouds

Thinking of Home
A place under the sun, damp, cold Many things can only be silently imagined There, sheep bleat The wind blows over the hillside Children nibble on their mother's shriveled breasts, listening to the highland singers' weary songs. An autumnal flavor day by day seeps into the forest. Imagination rouses its wing, innumerable fruit like stones fill the hillside with motion The sound of the shepherd's flute in the vacuity of dusk gradually chills A place under the sun, freedom and dreams roam in a distant land. Eyes praying for rain painfully crack with the sky. Weeds bordering every road home madly grow, but the sun is so serene There, songs and tears water pomegranates and olives, thus their bitterness has a lingering aftertaste Men, knives in their belts and hunting muskets in hand, mount horses to journey far Hillside after hillside of wild buckwheat in the midst of women's melodies grow and are cut, are cut and grow again There, the lovers' gaze amongst the sound of invocations stir, the rainy season follows lofting away The farthest point of every road's wooden railing, all have an old broken-down tiled wooden hut for every distant traveler who enters wine bowls, hearth, and village fire dances, warm and unforgettable times A place under the sun, I am often stung by poisonous arrows of gossip Gazing towards home far away, I always believe the soil breeds fairy tales, friendship and goodness Singing the village songs, tears well up and fall My dear family, though a sandstorm blurs the distance, your eyes may fill with sorrow, but we should live on, bequeathing love to this world

Lost

That mysterious path has already disappeared The pine forest is still far away A small red winged bird flies by The setting sun is the only projection on the distant hills Time is a piece of illusive paper On rocks, no clues have been etched Passing a patch of wild flax And happening upon a youth on a horse, a smiling face Filled with meaning Without the silent beckoning of smoke from the hearth A few old walls Only leave behind years of cold fingerprints Resonating in the void At the brink of twilight, the earth is old, the sky is desolate Looking back, the youth Is no longer on the road

Translated by d.dayton

Luruo Diji

from I Belong to the Primal Chaos

Taking a Photo on Tiananmen Gatehouse

I climb up on Tiananmen Gatehouse A sound Ever reverberates in my ears I turn my view outward The red flag flaps Cars flow like shuttles The photographer tells me to raise my arm and wave But my hand that is used to writing poetry Droops down like a pen pointing at the earth where masses of people have stood before

Mountain Road
From the native village the mother's hand unafraid of brambles and thorns passing over mountain peaks from afar reaches for me

Translated by d dayton

Jimu Langge

from The Silent Revolver

The Coming of the Bimo

When feeling jinxed I go invite the Bimo and get some things ready branches, grass and of course a lamb The Bimo sits at the head bundling grass according to custom and chatting genially while a bowl of wine is placed before him The lamb is led by the person leading it its expression sedate and seasoned as if it was raised by the Yi from the time it was born to fulfill this duty Actually, people and sheep are different

People, in a lifetime, have to experience many times this spectacle but sheep only have one chance after which they will be slaughtered The lamb head and pelt given to the Bimo and the meat shared among everyone At nightfall the Bimo sobers his smiling face beginning the recitation Rhythmically clear the scriptures are akin to black people's singing with the addition of eastern mysticism The Bimo steadily lifts and swings the bells a crisp ringing accompanying the reading words It spreads into the darkness outside the room and into the hearts of the people The Bimo has come Ghosts and goblins will be subdued Man and beast will live in harmony The famous Bimos are all very busy In other villages the same sound resonates with the serenity of the evening Even if outside cultures are like the cows and sheep at nightfall entering the mountain villages in waves

Friends from the Lowlands

I was born in the mountains I grew up in the mountains I think that one's environment is really important as it guides my thinking and emotions, virtues and shortcomings When my lowland friends and I are together, I don't recognize how I am different from them This goes against my point of view that a fish is a fish, and a bird is a bird Only crazy people and some poets can make a fish into a bird

and a bird into a fish! When I'm with my lowland friends talking and going places How can there not be a difference? Mountains high as they are The lowlands flat as they are We partake in the same culture Have the same kind of dealings And even so many feelings we similarly can't handle so we go straight to the drink I hope the difference is in the alcohol I observe their attitudes That cyclical way of drinking shows that they're already uninhibited to the point of not wanting to be anymore uninhibited This made me feel at once high then low again Just as I beginning to doubt my own perspective I finally realized a point that I was different from them on I try to dig up differences and they probably never would

Morning in Lingnan
Coming out of a dream The air so ordinary I flip up my collar Saying farewell to Lingnan's morning Along the way are rows of Fresh things

Translated by d.dayton

Bei Dao

Black Map

in the end, cold crows piece together the night: a black map I've come home the way back longer than the wrong road long as a life bring the heart of winter when spring water and horse pills become the words of night when memory barks a rainbow haunts the black market my father's life-spark small as a pea I am his echo turning the corner of encounters a former lover hides in a wind swirling with letters Beijing, let me toast your lamplights let my white hair lead the way through the black map as though a storm were taking you to fly I wait in line until the small window shuts: O the bright moon I've come home reunions are less than goodbyes only one less

The Rose of Time

when the watchman falls asleep

you turn back with the storm to grow old embracing is the rose of time when bird roads define the sky you look behind at the sunset to emerge in disappearance is the rose of time when the knife is bent in water you cross the bridge stepping on flute-songs to cry in the conspiracy is the rose of time when a pen draws the horizon you're awakened by a gong from the East to bloom in echoes is the rose of time in the mirror there is always this moment this moment leads to the door of rebirth the door opens to the sea the rose of time

Road Song

in the oblivion between the trees the lyric attacks by dogs at the end of an endless trip night turns all the keys of gold but no door opens for you a lantern follows the ancient principles of winter I walk straight toward you as you open the fan of history that's folded in an isolated song

the evening bell slowly questions you echoes answer for you twice dark night sails against the current tree roots secretly generating electricity have lit your orchard I walk straight toward you at the head of all foreign roads when fire tries on the heavy snow sunset seals the empire the earth's book opens the page of this moment

Ha Jin

Spring

In the late afternoon drifts a chorus of birds that sways a boat abrim with hopes, forgotten but still floating in the bay. If your heart is full of longing for a distant trip, it's time to go. You must set out alone expect no company but stars. In the early twilight billow the golden clouds suggesting a harvest, remote yet plausible. Perhaps your soul is suddenly seized by a melody, which brings back a promise never fulfilled, or a love that blossoms only in thought, or a house, partly built, abandoned to the elements....

If you want to sing, sing clearly. Let grief embolden your song.

Pomegranates

Another rain will burst them they will grin, full of teeth, through the tiny leaves that used to hide them away. I'll take a photo of my pomegranates for you, the only one I care to show. Like others you craved the fruit so much you overlooked the crimson blossoms wounded by worms and winds. You could not imagine some of them would swell into such heavy pride. I can tell you, they are sour.

Heaven

Every religion promises a unique heaven where there's no sickness, old age, pain, or death. In Pure Land Buddhism, heaven is said to lie somewhere in the west and you can get there if you do good, recite Amida's name every day, and never kill.

You'll be reborn into that vaulted domain not from the spasms of a womb but from a lotus flower such a birth saves you from falling back into a lesser incarnation on earth. Once you settle in the Pure Land you'll suffer no extremes of cold and heat; you'll be provided with beautiful clothing and gourmet food, always readymade. There will be no such things as greed, anger, ignorance, strife, or laziness. The place is resplendent with precious stones, towers built of agate, palaces of diamonds. Huge trees, made of various gems, bear blossoms and fruits that are always fresh. Giant lotus flowers diffuse fragrance everywhere. There are also pools inlaid with seven jewels, holding the purest water that can adjust itself to the depth and temperature the bathers need. Under your feet spreads the ground paved with jade. Day and night flowers fall from the sky shaded by nets of gold, silver, and pearls. In the air waft celestial music and aromas. Not to mention living with Buddha and Bodhisattvas Born of flesh and consumed by care, how can I not marvel at those wonderful things? How can I not think of mending my ways to earn entrance to that splendid place? Yet tired of travel and tangled in the web of dust, I will still pray to the almighty power: let me be a tree on earth when I die, a tree that blossoms into fruit every summer.

My Father's Zen

Like the statue of an Indian Buddha, on the cushion he sat, cross-legged; his world existed in that candle light. He told me he had seen, many times,

a yellow crane descending from Heaven. His reed-cushion, he explained, was never touched by human joy or grief; once he sat on it, day or night, he would not budge a whit even if the house had caught on fire. And in his hour of his meditation, I saw him stretching out his arms like a cat, or pulling his limbs together, or lifting up his head, like a silkworm before the spinning, and I saw him doing all these with his eyes closed, his hands resting on his knees. His dead-water mind, he said, would frequently escape from our farmland, like a willow catkin, a goose feather, floating, wafting and drifting away into the sky, into infinity; at times he felt his flesh and bones all evaporating in the summer sun, and at times he shrank into a grain, invisible in the armor of a sea turtle. And sitting before the candle light, I seem to see my father nodding at me, in the purple mist of the night: he will keep his promise, I know, that he would come back for me; but am I ready to go, ready to ride his Yellow Crane in the sky?

I Walk into the Ancient Village of Wu Chen

I walk into the ancient village of Wu Chen, among ruins, pagodas, huts, homes outlined by low black-tile roofs, collapsed brick walls. A little boy sits on the door step of his house, a ragged doll, his eyes dull as the cobblestone pavement, his watering nose hanging bubbles. A baby pig lies

beside him, in the mud, no sound from its pinkish snout. A red-ear rooster struts in the doorway, pecking insect and crumbs and grains. The boy is unaware of my approaching, the pig has no intention to rise from its sleep. And in the last sun, in the rising river mist, I see the flickering ghost of my lost youth in the boy's dirty face, in the war-ruined village of Wu Chen.

Cultural Revolution Display at the B.C. University, Canada

You walk into a rare collection of Chairman Mao's handiwork: a slaughter field, a sea of virus, a hell of vipers. You feel the coming of a collapsing sky, and you hear the groans of some 8,000,000 men and women and children in a cumulus of redness: red banners, red scrolls, red books, red sleeves, red hats, and the red scarves and neckties and clubs and ropes for Red Guards, kid soldiers and killing machines of the fat-belly King and his Queen and his slaves and his hunting dogs. And as you approach the smiling face of Mao, you bump into the flopping wings of a vampire bat, flier of darkness, that drinks, each night, human blood half the weight of his body; its hair turning crimson, its gore-saturated mouth salivating, and all waves from the Pacific may not was clean these walls around the art hall which is cold, muggy, a catacomb, and you will smell these little hands of the Red Guards, and the world will talk about that fat-belly King and his mistress Queen and his handiwork for another and another and another ten thousand years.

Arthur Sze

The Negative
A man hauling coal in the street is stilled forever. Inside a temple, instead of light

a slow shutter lets the darkness in. I see a rat turn a corner running from a man with a chair trying to smash it, see people sleeping at midnight in a Wuhan street on bamboo beds, a dead pig floating, bloated, on water. I see a photograph of a son smiling who two years ago fell off a cliff and his photograph is in each room of the apartment. I meet a woman who had smallpox as a child, was abandoned by her mother but who lived, now has two daughters, a son, a son-in-law; they live in three rooms and watch a color television. I see a man in blue work clothes whose father was a peasant who joined the Communist party but by the time of the Cultural Revolution had risen in rank and become a target of the Red Guards. I see a woman who tried to kill herself with an acupuncture needle but instead hit a vital point and cured her chronic asthma. A Chinese poet argues that the fundamental difference between East and West is that in the East an individual does not believe himself in control of his fate but yields to it. As a negative reverses light and dark these words are prose accounts of personal tragedy becoming metaphor, an emulsion of silver salts sensitive to light, laughter in the underground bomb shelter converted into a movie theater, lovers in the Summer Palace Park. (from The Red-Shifting Web, Copper Canyon Press)

Timothy Liu

Hazy, Hot and Humid

Stories told by abuse survivors sounding more or less the same.

The fat drops and the thin unraveling our moods. Soaking us down to the skin. Only so many ways to be violated. Duration not the question. Rather the intensity as streets grow wet and slick. Lip prints left on storefront glass floating far above the crowds.

Chen Kehua
The Pledge

The first time we met, he cut off a finger and gave it to me because of the pledge we made. He said: You'll get over it. Don't wait for me. I have six fingers on my right hand. The second time we met, he plucked out one pearl-grey eyeball and presented it to me before riding off on his horse, because from that time on I was no longer a virgin. I asked: I suppose you've got a third eye somewhere, have you? He laughed. Every night I summon my dream demon and question it closely as to his whereabouts. Through layers of cloud I watch as he lies naked on moonlit cliff tops accepting the caresses of the breeze and the dew, before arching his body and coming at last in the direction of the full moon. Oh, what kind of man is he? (Does he write poetry?) As I walked along the shore carrying my head in my hands, my dream demon, leading the way, said: Those skeletons at the bottom of the lake are waiting for you. Go on, let yourself sink and the fish will pick your corpse clean. But why fish? I asked that evening as he lay on top of me, his fishtail thrashing constantly against my ankles.

Because . . . he said, bubbles spewing from his mouth: because of the pledge we made. Because only fish know what it means to smear one another with slime. (1982)

Me and My Narcissus
Little by little, my strength has been failing me of late. I've realized I can no longer nourish myself solely with these wizened, sagging breasts. Should get my hair cut today? I ask this querying of Beauty sprouts suddenly like a ferocious potted landscape. I stand at length in front of the mirror, sideburns nailed onto the wall, and occasionally I glimpse the painted face of Destiny's clown sizing me up on the sly. You've been in love, too, then, I ask? Of course. And wearied of it long ago; what's more, I walk up and plant violent kisses on myself, leaving lip-prints and fingerprints, my bizarre signature, on every mirror. Yet how deeply in love I am (take a look for yourself). In the intervening spaces there exists the possibility of countless extensions and ambiguities: but I chose only one of them and that one was you. And perhaps even this choice was an illusion, I think to myself, because in actual fact there was no choice at all.

(1985)

Language Wounds
Whispers, fluid and graceful. Between the lips and ears of others drift the nails and needles of fine, fragmented metals. Bright, luminous laughter: the chill glint of blades. Only conclusions accompanied by scornful looks make the swiftest daggers. Implied meanings are mean, undeserved profits like the braking of a car or polystyrene scraping on glass. Greetings are like fog drifting from the mouth of a winter's day towards nothingness. I love you is non-existent, ice in love with fire. The circulation of rumors resembles treacherous flows of water: a bobbling truth is sucked down into the whirlpool. Abuse: a black sword coated in poison. I am prepared, but am I prepared at any moment to let myself be covered in language wounds . . . ? (1996)

Translated by Simon Patton

Chen Li

Animal Lullaby

Let time be fixed like a leopard's spots. A tired bird glides over the water, softly dripping its tears like a shot arrow waiting to land. This is the garden, the garden without music. The grayish elephant passes by you with heavy steps and asks you to guard the honeycomb, the honeycomb without bees. I will put away dewdrops for the night, for the grass without clothes when the stars rise in the sky, getting higher than the giraffe in the doorway. Let nursing mothers leave their infants like a cat finally loosens its arched back, no more abstractly insisting on the color of love, the height of dreams, for this is the garden, the garden without music. When the awkward donkey parades, don't imitate his snoring. Let time stop breathing like a bear playing dead lies down quietly, some white flowers swatting his eyelashes, some butterflies. I will wipe the doorplate for the cattle pen, for the swallows without eaves when the grayish elephant passes by you with heavy steps and asks you to mend the broken column, the broken column without sorrow. This is the garden, the garden without music. Circling eagles, cease hunting; hunting dogs, stop runninglike an angel's forehead, it's wide enough for fifty castles and seven hundred carriages. Let the children far from their mothers return to their mothers, like some long forgotten myth or religion is re-discovered and re-adhered to. I'll praise and pray for the fruit trees, the fruit trees bare of their fruit. Let time be fixed like a leopard's spots, some white flowers swatting his eyelashes, some butterflies. Don't disturb the wrath of the lion soundly asleep. This is the garden, the garden without music. The grayish elephant passes by you with heavy steps and asks you and the mud to cover his footprints quickly.

Traveling in the Family

And of course it is a book, a dictionary of absurd form and yet of absolute truth, printed on four-color cards, on certificates of indebtedness, on warrants for arrest, on marriage certificates. On this page is my father, who has been wanted by time. Because his mother is a crab swimming in the sea and crawling on the sand, all his brothers' names are made of water. Her husband came down from the mountain in a cable car, with the vigor of mountains and the violence of fire: pressing her, beating her, cursing her after drinking at midnight, leaving her washing the scars on her body with her baby in arms. And he resented that he had a fire-like name like his father's, just as he resented pneumonia and festering ulcers, which were responsible for his twin brothers' early death and crippling. This page reveals the family medical history too harsh to face my infertile grandaunt, my mother's missing father, my mother's brother, who came to know that his own father was my father's father after living together for twenty years, my father's sister-in-law and cousin, who married my fourth uncle and gave birth to three mentally retarded children, my father's father, who knew how to beget children yet knew nothing about childraising and education... This page is an index of difficult and obsolete words my drowned uncle, my father's self-imprisoned cousin, my father's sister who eloped when young but became a tonsured nun when old. This page is an index of words in order of phonetic symbols schooling: with years' schooling, my father was corrupt and negligent of his duty; screwing: gambling and screwing around half his lifetime, my father became a drug addict and seller. They are traveling in my trunk, overturning and rearranging the printing types again and again, to become my brothers, to become me. The margins are tears of mothers:

love, sorrow, silent embrace embracing anxious fire, embracing the waves that turn back, and on the beach of time, reading over and over the pages of the ocean that become all the whiter with every leafing.

The Ropewalker

Now what I sustain is, floating in the air, your laughter, your laughter, through the obscure quivering net. What if a ball larger than a roof should be thrown over? Would it drive you into sudden melancholy? A ball like the earth, pouring onto your face the unfastened islands and lakes ( just like a wheelbarrow with a loose screw). Those black and blue bruises are the collisions with mountains, the metaphysical mountain ranges harder than iron wheels, the metaphysical burdens, anxiety, metaphysical aestheticism... And the so-called aestheticism, to me, who tremble in the air, is perhaps only a restraint from a sneeze, an itch, with the head still up. What runs over you at the same time is the joke system of all continents and subcontinents, interwoven in your body like tributaries, a joke not very funny: black humor, white terrorism, red blood. Red, because you once blushed with your heart fluttering for the beloved girl (of course you can't forget the hatred and bright red blood aroused by jealousy and fury...) But you're simply a ropewalker walking on the earth, yet discontented with only being a ropewalker walking on the earth. Now what I sustain are the subjects left behind by the departed circus: time, love, death, loneliness, belief, dreams. Will you thus unpack the parcel before a houseful of silent audience? The moment of sudden solemnity after roaring laughter. You simply pull out, wipe, rearrange the earth's internal organs, those spare parts that make the world move, sunshine leap,

the male and the female animals reach their orgasms... They don't even know why you stay there, stay there (restrain from sneezing and itching), a wingless butterfly turning a somersault where it is. So you tremble in the air, cautiously constructing a garden of jokes on the dangling rope, cautiously walking across the earth, propping up the floating life, with a slanting bamboo cane, with a fictitious pen.

Hsia Y (or Xia Yu)

Poet's Day
On Poet's day the one thing I don't want to do is write poetry My hair needs cutting I need to put away my winter clothes I want to work on writing a letter and give some thought as to whether or not I really want to get married Better yet I could take a mid-day nap The rush mat is cool like peppermint Or should I have children? The room has a particular odor orchids, apricots L. Cohen blends with his guitar: Your enemy is sleeping But his woman is awake... He can help me finish up dumpling wrappers and the whites of salted duck eggs He looks really good smoking a cigarette He likes to tell jokes But there have to be better reasons than those Dear Ladies and Gentlemen I shouldn't shed any more tears over it

The globe is already 70% covered in sea water Plus, the water in the kettle is boiling First I'll brew a cup of tea He phones: Hey, let's do something exciting! Soft pleasing to the palate easily digested his lips the words he says But the water is boiling and first I have to brew a cup of tea To have red snapper from the Egyptian Nile I'd rather be a woman in this life It's just a commercial and besides I have to take a bath first In short poetry seems frivolous and besides it's kind of boring

1982

Ode on a Thing
Write on the body with a brush A young body carrying all of life's desires and gradually ruined As for the brush, it's really not a bad brush at all Atheist and fatalist world-weary but also promiscuous at this moment ever so peacefully drinking almond tea Surprisingly there is still a little happiness 1986

Dancing with My Back to You

With my back to you, I walk on the island wearing a morning glory With my back to you, I stare at the kudzu vines cascading from the eaves And poking through a bamboo fence And comb coconut oil into my freshly washed hair With my back to you, and a guilty conscience I walk away the beach far and curved With my back to you, I put on a brass ring So in the night you'll be able to reproach me for one thing at a time, while drinking wine Reproach me for hurriedly giving birth to my child In a vast field of sunflowers with my back to you For losing three buttons in the field of flowers And gathering up all the sunflower seeds to pan-fry them For oil With my back to you, exiled, roaming joined a troupe of entertainers Never again could I possibly become your impatient Nervous wreck of a bride With my back to you, I pay no attention to anyone not speaking Reading an unfamiliar book Rolling a cigarette Drinking tea You can still reproach me This time when we part we can truly say it's forever With my back to you, I weep With my back to you, I break into wild fits of laughter Carelessly taking another walk across The Eternal Youth Bridge at the eastern harbor at P'ing-tung Never again can we never again can we grow old together With my back to you in the pouring rain With my back to you, I dance with my back to you, profligate With my back to you, I stand beneath a tree Very happy for no reason Only certain of it when I'm happy You'll never again never again be able to reproach me With my back to you with my back to you, I grieve Grieving my joy 1990

Translated by Andrea Lingenfelter

Hung Hung

A Drop of Juice Falls

A drop of juice falls on the poem that I'm reading; I don't at once brush it away. Slowly it spreads on this scented, measured line of indelible feeling. A drop of juice falls, falls on a new poem by a poet far away who, in youth, was exiled even farther to labor as a boiler maker, coal miner, shop mechanic, where he came to know the stray birds, the leaves of grass and young girls existing only in dreams; went to prison and then, in a political reversal, was assigned to warehousing, an insignificant position with nothing to do. No one cares about any of this. On a certain day in his forty-seventh year, a cherry tree bloomed outside his window. He recalled a small alley from childhood, leading to that sea deep in his heart; memory shining like sunlight on the graffiti on the walls, so like a well-made poem, riding the wind, flying over the sea, landing on my desk. I'm drinking the juice, but my heart's not in it, waiting for summer to pass. One summer in childhood, I stole my mother's bamboo bank, hit my older brother, and lied to my teacher. When grown, I suddenly discovered I loved more than one girl, and so I began writing poetry. After my older brother grew up, he taught me to flatten an aluminum can after drinking from it, thereby decreasing the volume of the world's rubbish and, in a way, saving humanity from its excesses. In passing, I squeeze out one last drop of juice and spill it on the poet's little alley. One drop of juice, from who knows where remote South Africa or some other place? It was in an orchard where it couldn't hear the demonstration outside, the racial clashes; also, no one cared about this one dark fruit. It didn't mind and kept growing; didn't mind being squeezed and packaged; didn't care one way or the other dripping. Or, perhaps, it deeply desired to grow up;

felt pain when squeezed; grieved as it dripped Either way, it's just poetic speculation, which we can't rely on. There is only its last fragrance, color, brightness goose-down yellow congealed on the poem. When the hand lightly touches the glossy paper, there is no way to feel the drop or the handwriting, but when seen again, it affirms the power of memory, full fragrance, even to the extent of being sweet. No one can mistake it for a tear.

Translated by Mike O'Conner

The Captive
You provided me with a door and a window though they were locked. You provided me with meals cooked though they had already turned cold. You provided me with a chair and a rope a chamber pot and a horror novel. You told me stories every night before I died of the freezing cold, enumerating the mistakes which my ancestors had made. There were so many that some of them seemed like those you would make yourself. You forced me to make love every second day till you had your gas chamber repaired. An obsolete term, captive: one who can be bought back from nowhere nevertheless.

You are singing the songs from my childhood. Seems like you don't have a hometown of your own. I identify remorse in your kisses. And that is the taste of freedom.

Newspapers
Everyday, newspapers try to just as poets would do put love and ice cream into headlines but never succeed. Everyday, poets try to just as newspapers would do point out that certain trivial matters are changing the fate of the human race, in order to take you by surprise, but never succeed.

Translated by Tsui-hua Huang a collection of poems in the manner of the Tang poet, Meng Jiao

for rocks and flowing water

1 the north wind bites at crags which cannot be scenic but for the water and the woods below river goes where feet won't still I'm drawn on into this night 2 flows into the mountain to distances on

a voice upon stones bright brings views of elsewhere ten thousand voices sort to season sun, moon in glimpses rosy peaks from clouds are grown and gone I must move higher 3 my stick brings me everywhere of the trail it was made foolish legs won't carry me home now look at me lichen grown on a river bend so the caged bird is muted the royal horse brought to heel it's not the right time and never the right time the superior man's biggest sneer for himself silence a duty to mountains and mists 4 snow peaks in the tarn a sprinkling of stars the river runs too fast to rhyme dark waterweeds moss floating

to tame the in and out heart mind begin with observation 5 waves come through the hollow of valley they deafen water so fast it peels the fish scales the mountain is sharp its ridge drills the sky steep earth hewn stairs and dangerous planks these lean against the blue, the green immortals fly on fine boned wings from great heights one exaggerates mere duckweed my view here the forest below 6 notes in clear water tunes of cold stars to wash old things brings back the colour I drink from snow melted not from the stream which passes men's haunts smooth marble has a sharp edge jade is dense, is matted, like grass river and valley mortar and pestle

the argument of right and wrong and always wrung one way 7 go deep into the valley go high for the best views past paths, past every human trace escape the vulgar world forget mortality, daily things foolish beasts will not fear people thus they're tricked with nets equality of poor and rich comes only at this height see scholars clean like clouds and thin, so thin, dissolving 8 ten thousand zithers the discord of town where here the one stream sings old men keep their strength but when the wind blows lean in to the cliff to learn among mountains the peaceful mind never need be calmed 9 I crossed the south river in the great wind today I climb for the view most things in the mountains seem gaunt nights ice and the days cast in shadowless snow gaze into the depth of jade iced over still the spring sings no mending old worries dragons hide their scales to float

fish leap for new poems forget the old the moon is yet to hang on sparse summits not even the sun knows where it will fall 10 shall we visit the virtuous in first light? this mountain's thick with hermits the wind like a brush over inkstone and valley how angrily a river flows to set down the lure of all things in spite of their wildness just here where I've sought to lose my way

finding a pass among the green mountains

the mountain is strong but the horse is weak the horse is walking the mountain towers I must raise the bridle nine times in ten steps east, west? I'm going in circles water in the stream now rain the cliff is dark with mist

clothes billow and sway in the storm kudzu flowers wither, fall light gone, at last alone day's journey done

the Daoist's retreat

the mountain is mysterious plants on it are always green stones of five colours make it up the lakes are strange as well wine for the immortals won't make you drunk life's lengthened when wishing gives way starry night hear the devout to sleep through their song would be disrespect I heap pine wood against the cold I warm my hands to write

their meaning between lines

a wanderer by borders months and years the tracks on my face time and again I went up the mountain no use to pick the fragrant flowers that once in ten years we might meet

only the winter moon reflecting only the pine to straighten the heart though ice on the surface shines bright as glass the water still runs far below

parable
who says green mountains are tortuous and will not bend the straight pines there? who says that muddy water cannot dull the bright moon floating? I have an honest heart and clear but the folk here distrust the hardship of chastity none of that wavers my resolve integrity stands taller than pines the green of the mountain won't bend

a mountain path
horseflies gather to the bloody beast it can't walk almost dark no way back on the track ahead the grumbling of tigers not from cold

the lone traveller shakes

for a monk
in the mountains early or late rosy clouds the garment of the valley plain a fire is built of cypress learning the Buddha's way is hard the monk sews the climbing fig in order to make his robe

chant of an old man in the mountains

I didn't till the ground below the mountain I went to the top, tied an axe to my belt to chop pines on the way brought a ladle for water from my home spring how would I know the power of words? there's no need of memorising sun or moon my body is of crooked wood unsuitable for carving how else would life be long?

drink more!
perhaps you've not noticed no shadows are fixed in daylight the river's ripples won't come still

you can't live for a hundred years but if you could so what? good wine before us music out front one more! don't say your face is red have you noticed there are more and more pine trees every year more graves every day keep watching the south mountains let me know if you see any change down there

a sudden gust stirs up the road

1 climbing the mountain I thought of something cold rain tormenting all the grasses a sudden gust stirs up the road friends scattered, family how can they be helped, protected? five senses, five emotions shattered how does one get to be old? 2 sky vast and wild da hua the changing the source of creations

everything returning to nature the sun's six dragons rushing to the wasteland west day by day, more jackals and wolves the frost comes on the grass and the woods in a hungry year birds disappear not a grain is wasted 3 sleepless pacing waking or not the fidget of the bitter mind went up to the roof saw the old stars still stand the seasons stayed as they were though spring was everything's desire it too was with eternity so loyal the starving so straight the dead I thanked the ancients for their kind attention 4 the moon is a beautiful woman ten thousand miles away she is cool all the way here on this hillside yin air

the grass withers the empire a city a palace a blackbird in the jade hall up and left like that the man of integrity. . . no joy for him here what's he to do? ah but too many names to remember wealth and fame in the morning always indigestion later bad dreams exploits of the ancients have always confused me the beautiful moon shines cool shines clear 5 I, among all the appointed officials, went to a far field came back in the sunset Xi He, the sun god, stopped his wheels then four seas stood in the afterglow so desolate the sudden wind the owl cried high other birds leaned in all things scattered around a man in the east happy alone why so silent, so burdened with everything,

knowledge, the way? hungry even at year's end, the poet closes over the makeshift wood which you will kindly call his door 6 fire clouds show up the white of the moon full tonight wise men and fools alike in awe at daylight bettered there are many moons every moon has its parts, horns and quarters, new, full, waxes wanes every season returns so every star shines not to be missed 7 wind shook the empty mountain raised my head to the stars all foretelling met in the evening at the river bridge not much to say in sorrow so deep a poem had been left to tell it was because of the corrupt government he'd left the country a long time parted from the ones I love head full of home thoughts as soul from body life from its engendering soil

heart has its own way home 8 birds from the east, from the west fly cry in sorrow wish I could get past clouds to the blue drink in the uncluttered infinite

address to a certain notable visiting Zhong Nan Mountain

sir, you'll notice this mountain's stuck mid-way between earth and sky sun and the moon both rise from its rock day's afterglow when night has fallen dawn's slow in the deepest ravines people who visit here sturdy and honest the path is uneven but their hearts are not wind moves the pines leaves sweep the ten thousand hollows I know it's hard work and fame chased you here we'd appreciate it

if your pager was off

a visit to Long Chi Temple in Zhong Nan Mountain

birds cannot fly to this house just for monks a dragon makes the water green when the rain lets up how fresh the mountain I walked above the white sun clear river far below the ground was cold the pines far down paths uneven to walk when evening came the copper rang heaven knew the mountain looked up

aubade

lamp gutters but our talk goes on stars still but the day unveils willows shows orchids in dew

little mountain laughs at the towering peaks a new song? this one for dawn my companion already has words now that I can see the strings I cannot find the chords

Papa Osmubal

Bodhidarma

(after a sculpture by an unknown Chinese carver)

The roots partook of the fire of the sea and rocks The tree was like a saintly monk that paid obeisance And from its hoary flesh suddenly rose the bright countenance of a sage So peaceful and so mystic like the hillocks and the mountains Whose voice is that of blooming flowers and lions and dawns and birds

Ordori-Nembutso

(after a sculpture by Kuyashonin) Six saintly sages dwelling in me: This I never knew till last night When I said my paean much to my surprise They came out silent like the deep sky And they're all fireflies flying towards infinity And O all perfect eyes burning in the dark Intense like the sun chaste like the sun

Early Macao Morning

The Chinese baker rises earlier than the sun, the birds. His motion is meticulously measured, restrained. He is silent as his shadow. After planting the joss sticks at the altar, he pours his warm drink: the trickling of tea shatters the morning stillness. Then he sets out for work: the aroma of baking bread and steaming dim sum wakes the city up.

(from Poet's Jubilee Anthology, forthcoming The University of Macao, 2006.)

Yao Feng (Yao Jingming)

for the miners who died in the Taiping mine

one corpse brought out then another another black but hard like worst quality coal even in the explosion these bodies felt no warmth black smoke brought these souls from hell to heaven in the land of the living a cold wind has come resources are lacking we always need more the crematorium has become one of the facilities which keeps our country warm

white night
heart is all darkness nothing seen nothing heard like a black cloth over my eyes and I'm longing longing forever for light

I told this to a poet from Europe she said that the people in her land went mad killed themselves sometimes when days were too long and too light

old horse
used to handlebars, pedestrians and cars used not to running dirty and flabby skins like the dusk flayed close to black night the metal horse's hooves make a grassland track much longer I sit inside a noisy pub you're there, head lowered you've brought the big carriage right up the slope I don't know how it's said in horse, but what I mean to say's just this: 'old horse, let's have a drink'

Translated by Agnes Vong and Christopher Kelen

Jenny Lao

drowning

who deserves more sympathy? the one drowned or the one still sinking?

arms still up a struggle for the sky clouds passing or the wing of the gull snow-white dipping a careless peck missed fish and the last breath goes nothing in the sea to hold

hide and seek

divine game souls place revealed revealed there is no hiding he paid no mind the naked crowd set his prophetic eyes on us

you

you are a first encounter bread that survived me

your body a bridge singing and laughter the wedding dress after ceremony not to be worn how many hopes? a whole world is hidden and as if day never existed banquet after dessert, guests are gone echoes eloped with you are the new animal come growling for crumbs your world arrives in applause

Agnes Lam

our sorry

your love is one apology added to another, equal to the one that I glean like a beggar but I couldn't bear to swallow that apology with another that is my love

sorry the only footnote for our relationship

the red grapefruit

you cut open the grapefruit cutting carefully like tearing down my cocoon the grapefruit is opened into two red suns I feel so free flying out from the cocoon like the summer butterfly flowers are full of my eyes sweet as the grapefruit's red the two pieces of the fruit stay firm together plentiful like the smile of first love it's thus I fall in love with red you cut the grapefruit into eight pieces red mouthful by mouthful it's like eating my sweetest memories I take up the last segment and kissing this last piece of red my heart becomes pale the taste of a grapefruit like your love to me surprisingly sweet and plump to see bitter to the taste like sorrow when there is no more flesh in the grapefruit the inner skin of the fruit is so pale as to make me cherish that sugary smile of the red fruit that was

I hold the pale skins in my hand mind and eye bringing back the original it's like letting the cocoon wrap my body and now I can see the outer skin of the grapefruit was never red at all

Agnes Vong

lover of fairy tales

evening light a valley of shadows secrets between my footsteps and the tangled bushes a twig from the first branch for the ash girl a red apple for the snowy white girl a magic door for the nosy girl at the end of the valley my grandmothers grave

cousins

I'm a rat running I sniff weary legs shuffle along in darkness nose glued to the grassy floor smelling food and foe high above my swift cousin ambles over the sky wings almost motionless as she meanders with the river eyes down our reflections meet in the water an echo of the forest quivering in cold moonlight just one step and I can reach for the pool of shimmering stars

funeral march no mourners

a small hut in the grass by the reeds in the river the eldest son caught an eel but it had to be thrown back the second son looked after the chicken farm culled all of them now just the youngest son plays with a chick

the one that got away vegetables, rice all that they ate even their shit is poison

Ping-Kwan Leung

Sushi for Two

I want to be the seaweed that wraps you up; Will you embrace my clumsy body? Can you stand those bright sea urchin eggs on me? Loving you, I have to love them too octopus, cucumber, and crab fillet. Countless rice rolls of the past return to haunt us; Plain tea or sake? Feels like facing a thousand crossroads. Reaching for you, where you are soft and chewy I hit hidden spikes, Claws of soft-shelled crab like spider legs playing for love? Shedding layers of clothes, you stop as if shuddering; Nearing the coiled core is like touching some pain buried deep. With no idea how I taste, my rawness drives you away; Your natural pungency, hot and mustardy, hurts me too We fall silent, laid out side by side on the dish, like strangers, A word or two perhaps, but the stomach feels queasy with old grievances. When love is no more, evening meals are mere consumption of matter; When home is no more, maybe only the souls of clams will give shelter? From different cities we came, with different winters behind us We enjoy each other's bright hues but what keeps us apart? I chew, slowly digesting your deep sea fibre; You go still in the noise as I melt on your tongue.

Translated by Martha Cheung

A Restaurant in Poland
Having reached Gdansk at daybreak we soon realized a cup of coffee cost several thousand zlotys. Exchanging that for U.S. dollars seemed an impossible magic tug-of-war. Later in Warsaw we searched especially for a cafeteria-style milk bar feeling this way we could experience how everyday people ate. From the simplest sour soup or the most unpretentious breadis this how one can understand a place? Having seen swans and magnificent churches, we found a small charming restaurant over at the square; it served authentic goulash soup and fried potato pancakes that tasted so good, but the next time we could not find it. In the government-owned restaurant with its stately architecture, behind the heavy curtain that was about to fall, it seemed the evil shadows of history were there. Can a change of government alter a soup's taste? Until the lively sound of violins awakened us in Warsaw's night market, in the new post-revolution restaurant where the maitre said the place does not serve Hungarian red wine, only a good French vintage, the specialty here is French cuisine; trendy guys and girls applauded after the music performance we drank sips of wine, looked at the mixed-up, refracted images in the mirror and carefully chewed sweet carrots, bitter cabbage

Translated by Glen Steinman

Traveling with a Bitter Melon

I cooked it at noon, sliced it, then stir-fried it. It was delicious, a little bitter, a little sweet carrying the good wishes you brought with you from another place.

On your way back you had it for company. It must have gradually turned tender and soft beside you. How did you carry it? Did you check it in? Or hand-carry it? Did it look about curiously in the plane? Did it cry because of hunger? Did it get airsick? I said it was raining outside; you said where you were it was sunny, you were about to set off to my city so you thought you could bring it with you, carry it across different climates, different customs and manners. I believed you when I set eyes on it, thanks to you I saw its color so unique. In what climate and soil did it grow and from what species? This child from a poor family has grown into a body like jade; has an endearing character, kind of a soft gentle white, not dazzling, but glowing as if from within. I took this white bitter melon with me onto the plane and arrived at a foreign land, stepped onto foreign soil; only at Customs did I wonder if anyone had asked you: why isn't it green like most bitter melons? As they examined its dubious passport, ready to stir up trouble the innocent newcomer waited patiently, a heavy past on his shoulders, while it remained endearing as ever, neither bitter nor sour, but gently making allowances for those overworked and disgruntled weary-eyed grim-faced immigration officials. I took it with me and went on and on, like my words, further and further off the mark, trying harder to be inclusive because I didn't want to leave out any details, about how a bitter melon tossed and turned at night, missing its mates, gasping was it torn by memories of that familiar place under the melon-shed, by feelings some may find trivial? You're so kind towards my clumsy language habits, when I asked: when will you be back? You just said: when will you go? One leaving, one returning. You accepted the tenses I used, tenses slippery and imprecise. I always eat bitter melons. I ate one before I boarded the plane. Why then did it come all that way back to my table? Did it want to tell me the bitterness of separation? Of frustration? Did it want to let me know it had a tumor? That its face was wrinkled with loneliness? That it kept having bad nights, kept waking in the early hours and with open eyes waited for the arrival of dawn? In the rippling silence, was it telling me it was illness that made it bitter, or its inability to make whole the fragments of history? Or was it the bitterness of being misunderstood by strangers,

of being misplaced in a hostile world? It still looked so translucent, like white-jade, so soothing the thought of savoring it eased one's nerves. I was saying what everyone should say, expressing amidst lucid phrases what I wanted to say in confused sentences. Alone, I set the table, the ocean between us; how I yearned to be with you and share with you the refreshing melon. There are so many things that do not live up to expectations. The human world has its imperfections. The bitter melon understands.

Translated by Martha Cheung

Louise Shew Wan Ho

Remembering 4th June, 1989

Yes, I remember Marvell, Dryden, Yeats, men who had taken up the pen While others the sword That would have vanished Were it not for the words That shaped and kept them. The shadows of June the fourth Are the shadows of a gesture, They say, but how shall you and I Name them, one by one? There were so many, Crushed, shot, taken, all overwhelmed, Cut down without a finished thought or cry. Presumably, that night, or was it dawn, The moon shone pure, As on the ground below Flowed the blood of men, women and children.

The stunned world responded, and Pointing an accusing finger, felt cheated. But think, my friends, think: China never Promised a tea party, or cakes For the masses. It is we, Who, riding on the crest of a long hope, Became euphoric, and forgot The rock bottom of a totalitarian state. Then, the compact commercial enclave, First time ever, rose up as one. Before we went our separate ways again, We thought as one, We spoke as one, We too have changed, if 'not utterly' And something beautiful was born. As we near the end of an era We have at last Become ourselves. The catalyst Was our neighbor's blood. Whoever would not For a carefree moment Rejoice at a return To the Motherland? But, rather pick ears of corn In a foreign field Than plow the home ground Under an oppressive yoke. Ours is a unique genius, Learning how to side-step all odds Or to survive them. We have lived By understanding Each in his own way

The tautness of the rope Underfoot.

A Good Year

Ever an ending that ends so unendlingly Ever a termination so celebrating 1997 is a good year No better or worse Than the year before or after. Deadly dead lines kill They freeze the future Blocking free passage for the present The air is lambent with A collective will to succeed Almost as if to say With feet firmly planted on the ground What matters what flag flies above We are ourselves to a day 1997 is a good year As good as any year It is here

Alan Jefferies

The Wedding Rice

Still eating the wedding rice months after the big day. Not that we needed to, mind you,

there was just so much of it, a year's supply maybe. Remember the night we spent filling tiny sandwich bags, neatly wrapping each with crisp yellow ribbon? It's not hard to imagine there's still a lot of sweetness there, cooked into these pearly grains of rice saved from the summer, so full of promise, so full of love.

untitled

by day the shop on the corners selling red globules of meat pigs trotters, liver clusters by night bright red paper lanterns

Ice

You came back and wanted to buy ice for some reason which seemed obvious to me at the time. I knew where you could buy ice, at a place just around the corner

there were great big blocks of it sitting inside the factory. So we went there, I leading the way and you intent on following me. When we arrived I ran into an old friend who was there for a similar reason. We were both surprised to see each other, but that wore off after a few minutes and we were left looking around at these huge sheets of ice hanging around the walls. You soon became one of the workers in the factory, looking after the ice, acting like you'd been doing it all your life. And that was the last I ever saw of you. I looked for the ice factory around the corner sometimes but never could find the same place again. No one had heard of it. Someone suggested that it might have melted, but I knew that nothing could be that simple.

Timothy Kaiser

my father-in-law at twenty

when mother-in-law goes to the mainland for a few days father-in-law will take off his shirt unwire the ancestral wok from the ancestral nail mix salt and steam and cigarette ash into the fried rice he learned to make in London. in London when he was twenty

standing by a snowy statue in Trafalgar Square someone taking black and white snapshots of him wearing an impressive white woman in an expensive white hat. he handsome in a dark suit speaking dishwasher English yet the way he holds his cigarette the way he leans towards her dismisses the camera the cold the woman must have understood. I have seen those pictures my wife knows where they are hidden and he once told me when others were in bed how on the ship from Hong Kong to London there was more than one fistfight with gwei loh except when the ship stopped in Egypt a ceasefire to see the Sphinx he has lost the photos, he says, smiling coughing checking his heart blowing smoke away from me, too long ago. for my father-in-law at twenty the sands of Egypt spicy under his feet fists bloodied against condescension stacks of unwashed dishes awaiting his arrival in London and a mysterious white woman smiling at him from under an expensive white hat the riddles of the Sphinx must once have seemed no more difficult than striking a match on ice.

To Cool the Fire

My wife tells the story Of her black sheep aunt Married young Left children Husband holding the rice bowl For a younger man Villages were smaller in those days Losing face the greatest of all mirrors How could dai gad ze bring shame to a family Still smouldering from the Rising Sun Other beatings sealed in the attic? Those first children live in Sha Tin somewhere Everyone knows where No one knows where Her second marriage ended in divorce Third marriage to a man who gave her everything Except health Dying from bad feng shui She searched out one last remedy My wife remembers As she counts back on her fingers to eight or nine How Auntie used to cough around the village Buying up newborn puppies Their eyes never seeing the horror Because Chinese doctor say make soup To cool the fire.

Thailand 4-Day Package

dim sum cart lady budget package tour from Hong Kong slides onto her knees in the glass-bottomed boat flicks off the sun. startled husband muttering it being her first time.

only after a tour urchin taps impatience desire into her shoulder does dim sum cart lady slowly rise. shaken husband loudly blaming the heat. Monday night at 7 p.m. they touch down in Hong Kong where husband wants his dinner served piping hot slid under newspaper after luggage is uncoiled. Tuesday morning at 7 a.m. dim sum cart lady is back at work where bossman twirls toothpicks talks lobster loudly on the phone tickles more than cash register keys. as corals of steam rise from their dim sum carts others on the morning shift gather round tie their aprons ask what is Thailand. cheap silk handbags scarves foreign exchange they understand. much harder to explain should she even try? are the ripples of hunger that flicker and sway in the world beneath the glass-bottomed boat.

Felix Cheong Seng Fei

What Moves, Is Dark (i.m. Bob Kane, creator of Batman)

The night is young behind the mask. Its heart is used and blind to the dark. Wings at full reach, it will swallow streets, swooping on those whose conscience can't sleep.

A Detective Sonnet

Words find no purchase in these streets. I could wake the silence with a gun and all the confession worth a buy is a shrug, a blink of sun. If only you could see man as I see him, every tunnel of day blundering in the blind, a cul-de-sac through which evil empties its ways, you would understand why all I want is a woman whose heart hits me true and right, and that will be enough to be here, a stiff drink warming in her light and her tears christening my past when my case is closed at last.

Notes for a Suicide

I have a thread round each wrist which I know I can unstitch

anytime I wish. Hands freed, thumbs crossed, fingers restless as wings, I have become that crow roosting in my dreams.

Gilbert Koh

ching ming

to bright hill temple she has gone carrying joss and money bringing food and drink for her mother-in-law' soul. lychees oranges and one apple two bowls of white rice three vegetarian dishes ang ku kueh and bean paste buns joss sticks chopsticks a vase to hold the flowers two chinese cuplets to hold the chinese tea. with a heavy heart she kneels before the urn to apologise and speak for those who are not here. ah seng cannot come he is too busy at the office tua gor cannot come because she is in poor health

ah leong will not come now that he is baptised ji gor is not coming but i do not know why. so today i come alone, mother i bring your favourite dishes this money i burn for your use in the other world the years pass and we forget but i am here, mother, and today you shall not be lonely in the season of the dead.

Ex-Convict at a Public Swimming Pool

In the men's showers, the deep dark brown of his wet back and shoulders contrasts with the startling white of his bare buttocks, where four lines of dead hard flesh as thick as fingers raise themselves like ridges straddling the terrain of torn skin.

In the cold spray, he is singing loudly as he vigorously scrubs himself clean, defying the many furtive sidelong glances and a few open stares, his scars exposed like the past he will not hide, knowing it can never quite be forgiven or washed away.

The Schoolgirl Kills Herself After Failing an Exam

She jumps from the tenth floor of a housing block into the brief wild terror of freedom, dies and transforms into twelve paragraphs of newsprint in the Straits Times, cool and objective, black and white, verifiable facts only. We are told that her classmates are shocked. And that her parents refuse to comment. We know that she scored 41 marks for her last exam paper, a fatal result. A teacher describes her as a quiet, hardworking girl.

We feel obliged to pause to reflect. We wish to search our conscience. She was only eleven, we remind ourselves. There must be others like her. There must be another way, we suspect, for children to grow up in this country. But yesterday's news is quick to slide into the grey of memory. She will become another incidental casualty. We turn the page. We forget. Again we trip and fall head first into the future, down into the depths of a national urge to never stop excelling.

Yong Shu Hoong

Heroics of Loneliness
Really, what can one expect in a Chinese restaurant? In a city considered (by one of my friends) to be the least Asian of all American cities. But there I was, asking the waitress about cab fares and directions when he overheard me from the next table. He invited himself over and started asking questions. Cautiously, trying not to sound intrusive, he offered to take me to see the remaining sights of his city before my train at midnight. If I wanted. For a moment, I could only think of: RAPE and DISMEMBERMENT. After all, he did look like a version of Dennis Hopper. Beneath the meekness, a subliminal trace of menace. Eventually I said okay, against my judgment. And the next thing I knew, we were riding the rail to his home three stations away. Jury duty today, he told me, Didn't bother to drive. He pointed out his car parked alongside the road, as we approached the house that his parents had left him. In the sitting room, there was a decorated tree which he had never bothered to take down from past Christmases.

As we sat trading pieces of autobiography, he told me he never married. Tried adopting a kid from Korea but later found out that she was retarded. A pity. So now America wouldn't take her. He talked about the last time he met her. How she could almost utter, Dad. When it was time to go for our ride, he decided to let the engine stir for a while before we headed for the night. Driving around like old acquaintances, we gazed at old houses along Mexican War Streets, passing the pubs in Shadyside and then, the Civic Arena. We even stopped for drinks at the Rosebud, a place swamped by loud alternative rock which I think I appreciated more than him. And after the alcohol, I had no more excuses for not acknowledging him as friend. When the time came for parting, we shook each other's hand long and hard. Not without a tinge of something. And in what more appropriate setting than the train station. Of course we promised to keep in touch. Et cetera. I never forgot his kindness. It was only later that I realized we never quite broached the subject of loneliness.

Seeing Snow for the First Time

It is strange how snow makes food out of everything! Scattered across desert plains, it anoints little sand stones and monumental rocks. But all I'm envisioning are frosted pastries and coffee cakes cloaked

in generous icing. I am either poetic or hungry. And snow in the sky is another thing: it flies, carrying the wind. One flake crashes upon my nose, and in heaven an angel must be missing a sequin.

Before the Rain

We gather as a family at Mount Vernon where Grandmother's ashes rest in an urn behind a coal-black marble plate, pigeon-holed within this miniature flat for the dead. Aided by Ching Ming rituals, we dare to make small conversation in our attempts to dilute past feuds, learning once again to be amiable towards one another, especially those we don't ever see on New Year's anymore. And we offer: plump chicken, greens, a small bowl of steamed rice, Jasmine tea in a porcelain cup laying out fruits of differing seeds, feeding the fire with paper money, praying for divine protection with the animated bowing of joss sticks before the soft rain falls, remembering Grandmother's love as we sharpen our own propensity to love hereafter. from Isaac (Firstfruits Publications, 1997)

Alvin Pang

Other Things
To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow Amana Colony, Iowa, Sept 14. To buy a potted plant is to admit both faithlessness and need. To water the plant, perhaps daily, perhaps once in a while when you remember and the leaves start to droop, is as close to love as it gets. Other things mean other things. To light a lamp is to hide darkness in the same closet as sleep, along with silence, desire, and yesterday's obsessions. To read a book is to marry two solitudes, the way a conversation erases and erects, words prepare for wordlessness, a cloud for its own absence, and snow undresses for spring. The bedroom is where you left it, although the creases and humps on the sheets no longer share your outline and worldview. In that way, they are like the children you never had time for. A cooking pot asks the difficult questions: what will burn and for how long and to what end. TV comes from the devil who comes from god who comes and goes as he pleases. To hide the remote control in someone's house is clearly a sin, but to take the wrong umbrella home is merely human. The phone is too white to be taunting you. The door you shut stays shut. The night is reason enough for tomorrow, whatever you believe. Remember, the car keys will be there after the dance. Walls hold peace as much as distance. A kettle is not reason enough for tears. The correct answer to a mirror is always, yes.

a poet is instructed by the death of his master

Know this: what the world provides you must give away in turn. Forgive its loss. When morning breaks

into the room to tear you from sleep, do not mourn the night's passing. Let waking divide this day in which you walk from the past which already is less than whisper, fainter than a breath's caress. Let the day begin without prejudice, clean of grief or gladness. What lies before you is all the potential you need. All you will ever have. With one stroke you end the cosmos of a life. Gather your poems from the carcass. Remember you are dying. That your absence is also poetry. Make space with your words so those who come after may hear their own voices in your silence, deepening. (published in City of Rain, Ethos Books 2003)

fengshui

According to the fengshui masters, flowers in bloom facing east, bring health. A three-legged toad by the front door, means luck. For you, not the toad. To tap scholastic wit, stand in the magnetic centre of the house, locate the south corner and move your desk there, blindfolded. Avoid aquariums in the bedroom; they activate loss, unless you introduce an even number of fish

to absorb your doom. If they die you know they've done their work. Place a water dragon in your garden, not to ward off strangers, but to fetch hidden wealth. If you live in an apartment, make do in the corridor. Let each family member eat facing his or her most auspicious direction. Conversation is optional. There is no formula for laughter. This is serious business: do not expect miracles overnight; wait at least seven times seven days. Be content with lack, so the stars tell us. Or else stand there quietly, in moonlight, facing west, for a change. Bring someone else an augury of fortune.

Robert Yeo

A Poem as a Fan

for Elaine No sooner seated , she folds my handout and fans Herself. Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owen As she soon finds out, upon unfolding, have been Cooling her. Brooke's Soldier could but Owen's Anthem? She's fanned them, nonetheless, but can they fan Her in return? Not just for the moment or for The duration of my course, can English fans Be the cool conquerors of the March heat in Singapore? Can? Or should? Can or should poetry do this? What passing poems for those who feel the heat? Poetry that makes nothing happen has sort of Sprinkled you and made this poem. Sufficent for now. . .

Marina Bay

This was not new, we made it new, stole from the sea what the sea does not need. We are doing it, again and again. Sixties, seventies, Eighties, nineties. Not dinosaurs we are raptors of time, ruthless users users, disrespectful movers. The best renewers after the Dutch. Scorning the sea, loving the sea.

Eddie Tay

Even without a Body

Even without a body, I feel real as the moon that steals time from the night, from you, my evening star. Imagine me, perched high above faceless buildings, making love to you with words, hoping that you bear the fruit of my pencil's lust.

Once more my tongue is parched like wings of a mosquito, and once more it is thirsty for the dark wine spilled upon the paper of your skin. So come, I will create for you a city furious in the night. Only, do not look for me. I will not meet you at roofs of townhouses. You will not find me in faces of strangers you pick up from the streets, in clubs, in the gyms. You will see me only in the eyes of a lover who looks back at you. There, we will ride the high winds.

Cold Wind

There is a cold wind rising at 3 a.m., and here I am on this furtive pavement of men, haunting the night for you. For months, the wine spilled upon your thigh was sweet against my tongue, and I am now shaking and shaking to learn more of you.

I think I saw your feet yesterday morning by the curb; I know the curve of your heels, but the sun was rising, and I was a cold creature shuffling by the road, hiding among litters of leaves. I was afraid you would forget me, like the words you forget when you read, or the clock you forget when you glance at it to check the time. Your face contains for me an entire dream, full of secrets of the sea I long to drink. Among this assembly of crickets, I think of the centuries I've spent waiting for you in the tropics, in bodies of captains, sailors, pirates.

Naked, You can be Tasty

Naked, you can be tasty as honeydew or sour, like green lemons stolen from a garden. I was a cold creature by your bed, watching as you sleep. I was by your bed, curled up like a worm, watching as you sleep. Your smile gave me an apple sweet

from the first day. I like you best when you are still, as though you are dead. Naked, you can be tasty as honeydew or poisonous, like a fruit plucked too early. I know it is hard for you to forgive me, and forget. I know it is hard. The church is hard as the pavement, hard like a diamond that cuts. I am tired of nails and the shadow of Christ. I like you best when you are still, as though you are dead.

Toh Hsien Min

Grandmother Thng

You died when I was six. My peashoot mind Broke into an empty flat. I had To force the tears, so great was my disbelief; So great my disbelief, so sternly firm The ghastly coffin in the void-deck where I dropped a magic pen into the drain And the waters carried it away. I spurned Your instructing comfort, soaking in my pain. Your block's lifts always were in disrepair, Dim, slow, a stink of stale urine in it. You soothed me with a Milo and Marie

Biscuits. Your lips were full, too large, I thought, For you to have been beautiful. You hit Me lightly for my impudence, and brought Red chillies from the kitchen. You loved me. Most days we would wade through Chinatown. I nibbled on a salted cabbage leaf Fresh from the brine, moving from stall to stall, Sometimes losing you; you were so round, Your arm was like a leg of lamb, and all Your samfoos were unsleeved. It was a relief To sit down in a dim sum restaurant And roll the tea-cups in the scalding water. Or else we stopped beside the bamboo hag With her pots of soup, I ready to dissent If you asked me to drink a soup of gag Of herbs or baby chick knob-winged at slaughter. Some days we turned the corner to Temple Street, The asphalt squeaking with dirty water, the crowd Less hoar-haired. There you bought at sundries shops Your favorite sng buay, which I couldn't eat Because it was too sour. A few more stops For medicine-hall powder or a loud Exchange of words with a friend, in which you would lay Your hand on me and claim me, Ngor ge shuin; Waah, lang jai your friend would rejoin; and back Up Neil Road we would trot. You used to say First what a good boy I was, then switch tack Bluntly, and though I made a face like a prune, I would tread on your back to firmly massage You. As you slept I crawled beneath your bed, Trawling spiderwebs or playing at tents, And rolled on it when you got up, or barraged It with my weight, picking up the scent Of Tiger Balm. Some days I quietly read

An Enid Blyton, or admired my aunt's Books, a Lady Chatterley's Lover chief of them. The woman on the Emma cover had Your face: a plumpish one, with brows that danced, And lines I would love to write, which greyly bred. In the evening from work my parents came. And after all these greening years I find That I am no less salted by my grief, Incapable of love still, heartworn, dead. (Published in The Enclosure of Love, 2001)

The Country of Anaesthetes

In Asian civilisations there exists a tendency to central control. Think of the river of Chinese empires beginning with the Qin, the Mongol empire, the Mauryans, the Malacca Sultanate. Greek democracy and Roman fori would take a couple of millennia to come through, and even then, think of how poorly they have been carried out, in places like Indonesia or Taiwan. When Woodrow Wilson said the Allies were making the world safe for democracy, he didn't think to make it safe from democracy. Now, China, Vietnam, North Korea all embody the Asian tradition. It is not that they do not strive for higher virtues, but that these consist in a subordination to the state, rather than an exertion of the individual. Little countries can also build little empires. Without military might or geographic possibility, one presses on in other ways. One could dominate in economics or culture. Here, in the country of the anaesthetes, we build an empire of souls. Our method is the supreme art. We give our citizens a plethora of choices, but take away the facility of choice. We detain them in concentration camps, thrust them beyond their fragile bodies' limits through forced marches under blazing sun, through blades of lallang, spears of mimosa

and mud, against the assault of mosquitoes, until they understand no other means of survival than to bend, double up, fall prone to instructions mushrooming like artillery shells, and, key to all, learn how not to feel, so that the early mists, noontime broiling and the tepid night of blindness are one and the same, a recoilless spinning out towards an amnesty of nothing. In this way we trade senses for control, ability for efficiency, the extremes for the average. Horace says merely to wish is not enough, one must desire passionately, in order to achieve anything, and if we are to be empowered over our people we must not let them desire. Or rather, we must teach them to desire what we want them to desire, and in this way replace what they might feel with what they do not. It is well known that a ripening fruit shares its mysterious charge with other fruit. We must be this fruit. We must allow our people, from time to time, a taste of our sweetness, which they are now unable to cry for before the malic acid of youth and the bitterness of age, so that we can gather up more sweetness, more sweetness than even we can gauge.

Festival of the Hungry Ghosts

The Chinese family business next door is burning ancestral offerings again, and the smoke is slipping through our glass doors like the spirits supposed to be roaming the earth this month. Something as hostile in me wants to march fiercely up to them with a fire extinguisher and spray potassium bicarbonate all over their rusted metal urns, but then all hell would break loose, and something much worse than smoke might come through our glass doors during the witching hours. Instead, I content myself with this: if it is true that whatever we burn ends up in hell, then rampant inflation is the least of their worries, for our incinerators burn a few hundred tons of garbage every day. I do hope the spirits are better at recycling than we are, but if it also worked in reverse, which, judging from daytime TV could well be the case, things mightn't be so bad. With an ecology between them and us, our energy reserves would never run out, and population renewal

would cease to be an issue. And on top of that, hell would be free of mosquitoes, the air would be sweet with aromatherapy and tobacco and their forests will be lush and green, and if we still do not have a burning desire for a hastened cremation we can comfort ourselves every time we get hot under the collar, as I am right now thanks to the acrid stench of combusted paper in my office, not only because there's no smoke without fire but also that we can return every summer like a convection current to bless our children and our children's children with all the sweetness and warmth and light of our new demesne.

Cyril Wong

The Object Of Loss

My toenails are stunned bald again. I cradle a mess of milky crescents in my palm, then empty it out the window, wondering where the wind would take them. Fallen strands of my hair stand out against the white of the floor, the morning I thought my sideburns had grown too long. A new tooth burrowed out of a corner of my mouth, which I later had removed. The friendly dentist returned it to me in a plastic cachet I kept in my wallet and forgot all about it, not knowing what to do with what was once a part of me. Later, the anesthetic wore off, and like any loss I was made

to bear that long wait for the ache to end. The year I fell in love with you was the same year your mother died. We sat in the first pew watching the priest pray for her soul, while I prayed too that I would always make you happy. I imagine that when we die, the body spirals like a top in slow motion, disintegrating into uncountable atoms that fly out from the momentum in every possible direction, lodged back into the earth or scattered wildly across pages of air, other people left to wonder where the wind will take them.

Anxius

Other seed fell among the thorns, and the thorns came up and choked it, and it yielded no crop. Matthew 13:7

Blame the self, blame you few do both. You are the room I flee with the door flying shut behind me. If I come back, it is from exhaustion, not regret. Inevitable how my mother lost me in the middle of a sentence about a happy life, amidst 'marriage' and 'the Christian faith'. Beware the taxi-driver with his color-printed pamphlets about God and The Way. Two miracles, he claimed, in a life without miracles, when luck visits the unlucky at any time, and eventually. Beware the evangelist whose mind is buried like a bookmark between the pages. The mind must be an interminable rush of clouds, the occasional good weather.

Walls are you. Any loss of light is also you. Takes time to accept this is how I find you. Only this or inside a house on fire do you regain my full attention. Nothing stopped Mother Teresa, not a broken collarbone, not two heart attacks. Isn't it like you to prefer the gift not given with great emotion, but with great discomfort the act of kindness no kindness to us. Happy the atheist that buys the poor man a meal, no thought of your kingdom in her head. Let's return to that chair, the dark room encircling it like a suspicious dog, your whip drawing my body to its reaches, followed by a slow, nearly tender settling of the self, that moment when the body rediscovers sensation so this is why I let you do this, this is why you did not heed my cry and stop... Let's talk about endings. Some I ask for, some you inflict upon me. (Not some. Most.) You arrived stomping upon the void's wide roof, proclaiming ownership, spinning out the world on the loom of your laws, laws you had in you all along without question. When did you first perceive the need for your pale shadows, children born thirsty for your light? Is the clich then true, that the point of conflict was to charge the light with meaning not just hope, but also reward? Or is the mystery not a mystery after all, that you arrived without reason, like a seed with its singular purpose purest want needing us to fail and keep failing in the light of your original success? I kneel to respect you, the you in the altar, the sculptural cross, the you that hangs in the air for as long as incense can hold a church in its atmosphere. The stories contradict not just each other (Jesus healed two blind men after Jericho, according to Matthew; Mark claims it was only one), but also themselves (Not be judge, lest you be judged, as opposed to , , , judge the twelve tribes of Israel, in Matthew's account). I enter your house, a spy committing the sign with a finger kissed by water. Already, altar boys send a frisson down a thigh; clenched eyes upon the brink of something spiritual, my head bobbing under the cloak (hard and rough as Simone Weil described of the test for what is real). My throat is lined with weeds. If it sounds like I am choking, you are wrong.

I am back in a room that has given up its light. The chair is you. And I am also you. At last, I admit this. This also means you are a fool and full of holes. Admit this is not going anywhere. Admit you never meant for any of us to triumph.

I Didn't Expect To Write About Sex

Did you know that after I came, I imagined my pelvis had emptied out into a dark cave you could crawl into, lay yourself down and fill my body with your sleep? This isn't really about sex, is it? Yet I could write about your tongue, how cleverly you rotated it like a key to slip open every lock of resistance under my skin, muscles loosening like a hundred doors creeping open across the conservative, suburban town of this flesh, desire stepping into the open like Meryl Streep in that film with Clint Eastwood, a wind calling forth the stiff body from under her dress so wholeheartedly how could she not help but undress, welcome it in. I could also write about your hands, tenacious dogs of your fingertips unearthing pleasure from every pore, jumpstarting nipples with the flick of your nails, each time you pushed in deeper from behind. I must not forget to write how much I love you when you warn me not to swallow; I love how I take you anyway into my mouth like tugging a recalcitrant child back into the house, even though he realizes deep inside himself that he would always long for home; I love how you taste, what was inside of you now inside of me, sliding down my throat like the sweetest secret. I could write about how when you fell off the peak of your mounting hunger, your hands stayed anchored upon my nape, as if to keep from drowning, as if to let me know, Even when I'm this far gone, I'd want you here. I'd want you with me.

Arthur Yap

expansion
no stretch of darkened sky would show a patch of red a patch of sunset

where the sun will not stay after dark the skyline of houses grows with the sky and who can tell what is this completion; i cannot chew the month to days masticate the days to hours and line the hours each to each saying, out of context, i die. where once a single day was a day and a night it is now the amoeba of day of night, the line of sponge houses soaks in the sky as the sponge sky seeps into the houses. where once houses hung from sky they now are clutches. so one urban expansion has to lean on another or they die while the tree of night grows and grows [From Only Lines (1971)]

the coffee house, cockpit hotel

not a daily occurrence: a bride waiting, 7.30 pm, at a coffee house. you, shifting eyes, forkfuls into mouth, stop. stop & watch the bride, 2 bridesmaids & an elderly chaperon at the little round table having a respite before the dinner. her eyes, downcast, become modest behaviour. immediately one floor down dragon room is taken for the reception. relatives line up at the entrance,

the men clutching proffered tins of rothmans. twice, a hand gently steals out & pats any suspected flaw of coiffure into perfection. most of the time, looking at her gloves, her eyes are downcast, cast downwards one floor immediately below. at the end of an elastic hour will she rise, raise her eyes, descend one floor, ascend the low platform elevating the tabled 10 courses, smile gently at the groom, post-sharksfin & pre-crispy chicken & mark out clearly her domain, right here & right up there? [From Commonplace (1977)]

when last seen

three things he said & her reply rang with domestic despair. there he lurked, practicing his cruelty. too suddenly her sadness overwhelmed &, behind familiar things, a new keen hate & that, subsiding, erased her sadness. her regret & shame seemed to flow through her fingers; the prepared vegetables definitely tasted too oily; her snakes-&-ladders emotions the chequered dishcloth. three times the drain gurgled & her request rang with clarity. there he lurked, practicing his plumbing. the snakes & ladders slithered down, carrot ends & chillie seeds & onion roots. as he got up she threw the dishcloth, his face the draughtsboard. she saw distinctly a softening of his features &, stepping forward, shed all her tears into the sink. [From Man Snake Apple (1986)]