The Poetry of Wang Xiaoni王小妮
Selections: 1980-1993
Wang Xiaoni was born in 1955 in Changchun, Northeast China. Wang first established a reputation as a “Misty Poet” in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The first four poems of this collection belong to that stage of her career. She married the noted Misty Poetry critic and poet Xu Jingya and moved with him to Shenzhen in 1985. This change also marked an abrupt change in the style of her poetry, as can be seen below. A sense of dislocation, feelings of being an outsider and of being confined (as mother and housewife) all feature prominently in her later poetry. In 1992 and 1993, she contributed poetry to Zhou Lunyou’s Not-Not 非非 poetry journal. Since the 1990s, Wang has also made a name for herself as a writer of fiction and lyrical essays.
1) I Feel the Sun [我感到了太阳]
2) Children [孩子们]
3) A Birthday Night [生日的晚上]
4) There's This Sort of Village [有这样一个小村]
5) Love [爱情]
6) A White Horse [白马]
7) The Continual Allure of Wars Embedded in Square Frames [连紧不断的嵌在框里的战争诱惑]
8) A Well-known Allusion to the Red Slippers that is too Late to be Avoided [躲闪不及的红舞鞋的著名典故]
9) A Jar of Nescafe has Me Wandering in the Night [一瓶雀巢咖啡使我浪迹暗夜]
10) At a Mixed-up Junction, I Meet a Mixed-up Man Asking Directions [在错杂的路口，遇上一个错杂的问路人]
11) I'm sure Someone's Climbed onto the Sundeck and is Deliberately Tampering with Me in the Dark [定有人攀上阳台，蓄意暗中篡改我]
12) A Dead Person has no Friends Anymore [死了的人就不再有朋友]
13) Passing through an Oppressive Black Night [经历沉闷又黑暗的夜晚]
14) Many Many Pears [许许多多的梨子]
15) Close the House Door Tight [紧闭家门]
16) Half of Me is Pain [半个我正在疼痛]
17) Someone who doesn't Retort [不反驳的人]
18) I Love to Look at Cigarettes Laid out in Rows [我爱看香烟排列的形状]
19) I Ought to be a Maker [应该做一个制作者]
20) A Topic of Talk [一个话题]
21) A Red Color Emerges Out of My Skin [皮肤中浮现了红色]
22) A Person with a Pineapple in Hand [手拿菠萝的人]
23) A House of Great Depth [很纵深的房子]
24) Seeing a Friend [看望朋友]
I. #1
II. #3
III. #4
IV. #5
V. #7
VI. #9
VII. #10
25) The Softest Season [最软的季节]
26) I See the Potatoes [看到土豆]
27) People Waiting for Buses [等巴士的人们]
28) Weakness Comes So Quick [脆弱来得这么快]
29) Alive [活着]
I Feel the Sun [我感到了太阳]
I'm walking.….
down a long, long corridor
-- Ah, before me is a blinding window
on two sides the walls reflect the light
sunlight, me
the sunlight stands at one with me!
-- Ah, so the sunlight is as powerful as this
so warm it freezes your footsteps,
so bright it catches your breath.
All the sunlight of the universe is gathered here.
-- I don't know what else there might be
only me, leaning against that sunlight
standing still for ten seconds
sometimes ten seconds can be longer than a quarter of a century
At last, I charge down the stairs, heave open the door,
and run in the spring sun.....
Children [孩子们]
Some children are lying down in the distance,
mown wormwood as their pillow,
they count drifting clouds.
Suddenly they run up and pester me with "blind words,"
like little black buddhas,
they sit in an orderly circle.
I start to tell them of the fastest cars,
petulantly, they yell:
"Senseless gossip, it's all senseless gossip"
Stupefied they sit for a time,
laughing, they go to tote wormwood,
and bound heavy footed downhill.
On the hillside,
the firewood collectors have worn a path –
like an old yellow ribbon it swirls.
Moving bails of hay,
on the path,
obliterated by wisps of smoke on the wind.....
A Birthday Night [生日的晚上]
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
There's This Sort of Village [有这样一个小村]
There's a village,
and each year
there's snow that falls there.
In the village are a dozen families or so,
when snow falls, a dozen or so thatched roofs
like the white bread rolls
the villagers eat when an old year passes.
That year,
the winter was especially cold.
On the east side there was the noisy addition of a home.
The next day, in the little courtyard,
a snowman stood
wrapped in a bright red shawl.
Suddenly, nine years pass.....
For nine years of nights
two lamps in the village are the last to go put.
I really can't understand
those children who wear "mirrors" on their faces,
why they're always sprawled over books.
Deep in the night,
occasionally the sound of singing too.
Slowly,
the villagers gave them their attention.
Even the reels of wire
were carried in from the city.
Though to hear it from their lips
they still didn't believe those delicate lines.
The village had thirteen small gardens.
In them the "disappearance" of
carrots and shallots began.
The women,
their hearts pained, often swore,
but didn't want to know
who the hungry devils were.
Through all nine years,
no great disaster,
never less food, never more either.
The villagers lived as always,
yet how did they
ever get through it!
…..there are always people young and enthused on this earth.
For those nine years
on the east side of a village on a hill,
there lived twenty-or-so students from the city.
One day,
they were all gone.
The villagers say,
it was just one of those odd things.
Love [爱情] February 1985
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
A White Horse [白马] March 1985
A myth says a hopelessly white horse
abandons its grassland and gallops
and the sunlight's like a drum
Muddled, my thoughts wander
when I hear the story
my eyes close in a flash I see myself
and can but laugh
Boundless green
looking back, tresses over ears, scattering,
what's a homeland for
All day a child
shakes a box full of chessmen, listens to the sound
like horses
galloping in chaos
I sit bolt upright in a deep place
in veneration of the animals and people who follow after
The white horse can't imagine
what lies in front
of course I can't think either
and only want this long travelled road of boundless white
The Continual Allure of Wars Embedded in Square Frames [连紧不断的嵌在框里的战争诱
惑] January 1986
In front of a TV screen
a mother and son
talk of war
full of tender feelings.
The three-year-old worries about
how he could look when he weeps after his mother falls.
The thirty-year-old mother fantasizes:
The first shot's bound to be blank.
Suddenly,
two army trucks collide,
mother and son leap up all
hands and feet
splash out together following the blood everywhere.
When father enters,
he discovers two
people totally confused,
strange notions like bats
flash in their eyes.
Call them
and they simply don't respond.
They only flicker bright and dark
together with the TV.
Avoiding the hubbub,
the mother and son
are fixed solid every night
in front of the TV screen,
nothing in the world like
shooting oneself
can move a person more.
A Well-known Allusion to the Red Slippers that is too Late to be Avoided [躲闪不及的红舞
鞋的著名典故]
Three girls
buy pretty red shoes
at the same time
Under a tree that's about to wither,
the three halt at the same time,
open their packages to peek:
an idea
that cools them on the spot.
Immediately they haven't the strength to walk
and search everywhere for a deep submerged place.
They throw the shoes
into a stone cavern, for a long, long time
there's no sound of their fall to earth.
Three perplexed people with no boundaries
stand against the wind.
Not knowing how to prevent
the final scene that comes from far away.
And just at that moment
their hands also turn red,
their feet turn red,
and their voices too
Whole arms and legs
flutter under water faucets,
when they meet a traveller
their heads are sunk over washing out the sobs.
They don't know what for,
but they're too late to avoid it.
Too late to skip it by.
A Jar of Nescafe has Me Wandering in the Night [一瓶雀巢咖啡使我浪迹暗夜] 1986
When I think wild thoughts,
this brown thing's
in the dark twisting
on its black lid by itself.
I've heard it said
coffee exacerbates insomnia.
And if you drink lots
your skin turns black,
yet, still I can't resist, I drink it.
I certainly never thought
the transformation would be so quick, so thorough,
my arms have become huge wings,
through the black night I drift, a bird.
I lower my body to touch an unbroken chain of nightmares
at the edge of the bed.
I want to callout, but my mouth's full of bird talk,
and that person who always walks behind mine,
his bent over back,
is simply bristling with filthy standing water.
There are many, many feathers,
but it's still cold.
I say to the brown thing,
let me change back to a person,
I can't stand it,
this thing I went to buy myself
replies in its true colors:
It's too late too long.
At a Mixed-up Junction, I Meet a Mixed-up Man Asking Directions [在错杂的路口，遇上一
个错杂的问路人]
I've decided
before that person walks near
to duck into an alley,
because
the look of him frightens.
As it happens he wants to ask directions of me,
when he asks
his tone is mild
and he extends a right hand in a glove.
I tell him,
you can walk along with me,
he's not an evil man I presume.
Does this type of person still need directions?
When I part with him,
he raises the right hand again
mockingly,
I discover no sign of the glove,
his hand is entirely black.
In the dark
I'm filled with a profound black apprehension.
Each wall
sings in high praise of black,
all the one hand
How can this inhuman
hand be in the world?!
I'm Sure Someone's Climbed onto the Sundeck and is Deliberately Tampering with Me in
the Dark [定有人攀上阳台，蓄意暗中篡改我] 1986
I have just hung out my bed sheet,
and someone hammers on the floor,
calling yellow water's running down!
I go specially to take another look,
my bed sheet
is purest blue.
I lean on the strong light,
I shouldn't have gone to sleep,
after I wake up in a daze,
all the pages from the letter in my hand fall,
surprisingly dirty, after it has jumbled
the order of the pages.
I say, to this nonentity
I'm a dire and calamitous person,
he says: This is
the last pick, he squeaks
like a mouse
begging my pardon.
From thenceforward, I stop often on the sundeck,
conversing with this tamperer,
learning of many other
world affairs,
nowhere is there a door onto this sundeck,
and this continuing dialogue,
makes me unbearably happy.
A Dead Person has no Friends Anymore [死了的人就不再有朋友] 1987
Now a person wearing an army uniform says,
a dead person has no friends anymore.
This person raises the right leg to talk,
going on and on he grows small.
Over the graveyard flocks of black birds
caw as they flutter.
But, I see clearly
I'm still alive.
I live.
Air still crosses over my hands.
Fingers glitter, just
like gold.
I live and
no one can walk close.
No third hand
can take hold of mine.
Behind me a walnut tree emerges suddenly
I see only
its wise supple shadow.
You carry over a pile of pillows.
Say some fine words.
And briefly see life can also touch one.
Your glance drags over everything,
black tie pulled down to the ground.
You say I'm a splendid nothing.
I knew long ago,
I not here, for certain.
I sit very quietly in a different place.
Watching suns and moons
none entirely ideal.
I walk up close to you, making sounds.
The world leisurely withdraws
smiling in the manner a flower.
Great, there are no friends for me.
Passing through an Oppressive Black Night [经历沉闷又黑暗的夜晚] 1987
In the murk of dark you say
you must sleep.
But I sit, wanting to watch over it.
The evening is a lump of filthy mud.
The mud a black rhinoceros.
Darkness makes me impatient to get closer to it,
stand in it
as happy as if I'd just plopped into the world.
Now I'm even duller than mud.
I walk up to it,
want to think up a complex thought for it.
-- Could you not have been given birth in the dark.
with you like this, I can't sleep.
You, the malicious black night,
you cage me in the dark.
-- I can't see you. I say:
Is this the way.
In this black night I get up, composed,
changed into a woman with long hair.
My fingers like white feathers once again.
Warming your kneecaps with my caress.
Alive from dawn till night.
A person cannot always see the light.
I say, I will pursue the discharge of the dark.
Your look begins to blacken again.
In a night with not much air,
find the brute truth that makes a person great.
Many Many Pears [许许多多的梨子] May 1988
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
Close the House Door Tight [紧闭家门]
I wake from siesta
and discover
I write the best poetry
in this very large country.
Best if this thought
breed densely like the second hands
of clocks. The incessant sound of drums
careers from you toward me.
Like bells, weeds wail out
the hour. I understand
the moment I must close the door
and write a poem is here
Close the house door tight
sit down and love the world again
the mildew stains on all four walls
glimmer remotely on me, seated.
Let people sunk deep in heavy siege
listen everywhere
Let people thinking of offering a defense
stop short for one moment.
Write words on paper arbitrarily
no one has ever given poetry recognition
nobody ever
thought one could live gracefully
The sun
pecks at my thin door
Tell it someone is writing a poem.
Your eyes float massively on top.
Behind you on either side
a sky full of stars incites
I want to tell myriad things to be quiet.
A posse of illusions
passes through the four walls
and drifts toward me.
My world way out there has stepped in.
Half of Me is Pain [半个我正在疼痛] May 1988
There is a small beautiful bug
aspiring to bore into my tooth.
The world
its right side moves me suddenly
originally my body
was merely a tumble-down building
Inside one half of me a black fire dances
half of me is packed full of the sound of medicinal liquids
You extend, your hands
one grabs hold of me
the other grasps air with no transparency in it
pain is life too
we will never hold it down
Sitting, then standing
let the wind blow this way and that.
When the pain flickers
then we discover the world is unusual after all.
We're unhealthy
but
still want to walk about
The pain-free half
is infatuated with you
the left hand pushes at a door.
The right side of the worldcolorful and bright
the long hair of pain
billows off and becomes a jungle
That is me too
That's yet another good woman
Someone Who Doesn't Retort [不反驳的人]
I'm sitting
on a white china pot under the eye of the sun.
Motionless for a long time
I become someone who's entire body is still
Suddenly somebody howls
the sound of it shrinks me.
Swaying
the boss's facial features are all sharp
I watch closely when the world is lifted up
that momentary flurry.
More vast than a mouth.
Yelling must be a real kick.
But I don't offer a retort
I stand up
ten thousand things squirm in solitude.
Beneath the sun three china cups are added
the water calls too
and fireflies burn fingers
Three fat guys
sit disdainfully on the world
I watch over it
and bow down to serve tea for everybody
on the earth's surface
shoe after shoe inclines forward.
I haven't had a thing to say for a long time.
The sky is soft and kind.
But someone suffers a evil illness.
The sky looks straight down on us no more.
Black clouds squat on the crowns of our heads
A shout is the shimmer of a scythe.
But the grassland
has waited long to lie waste.
We're green grass no more.
Breathing brittle branches and ruined leaves
we've learned how
to hold the tea pots and not retort.
I Love to Look at Cigarettes Laid out in Rows [我爱看香烟排列的形状]
Sitting among friends of yours and mine
our words ramble far and wide
we open packs of cigarettes one after another
I love to look at cigarettes laid out in rows
and always want
to break them apart with my own hands, too
While the men hesitate
I'm so lissom
The sky and earth
rock me gently
When the insides of cigarette butts hang their heads
only they can hang that deep
into the purple and red flare
at the core Now I stand up
The sun says it saw light
Warmed by your hands
a crustacean even smaller than a crustacean
moves tirelessly
and sees many many children below its smoke.
I despise frailty
but tears sometimes change into red grit
especially during my gloomier days
I must coddle men
This world should feel fortunate
to have me living in it
and stretch out the weak hand
I love profoundly
the weighty unbearable pain
I Ought to be a Maker [应该做一个制作者] March 1988
One year they ordered me to make wheat.
My arms grew ripe and keen.
Another year they commanded me to make hemp rope.
Much of the time my thoughts flew away.
Now I sit writing a poem before the dawn light.
You say I don't look well
I'm ill
When I caught this sickness
You were rushing from east to west in the city
you still want to chat and smile with the ugly people.
You say you're undergoing a test.
I see I'm too sick
all because I take a liking to
a parachute
drifting over from a fond season of romance
The powerful good in your world
I can't see
I write the world
and then out comes the world, head-bowed
I write you
and then you take your glasses off, look at me
I write a me
and see my hair is dismal, ought to be cut
Only a person able to be a maker
is truly extraordinary.
Please take a brief nap
and then leave me alone for good
I still want to write poems
I'm still the obstinate maker
in my narrow room
A Topic of Talk [一个话题] August 1988
Big Beard has come.
His back-pack lies under the lamp.
Big Beard's soul
is a squad of Yankee invaders of Vietnam who have lost their way.
That day he said:
How can you be so bright
sitting on a sofa?
Big Beard just has a big beard.
I ask him
where he's deposited his soul.
Bright light and anxiety
can all be called philosophy.
And philosophy can be freely altered on the sly.
It's a swindler.
I sit on a bamboo mat.
These days sitting on bamboo mats you can only lose, miserably.
People outside the door are blindingly bright.
I sit at home
in a dark spot watching people and trees
all exceptionally clear.
The business of war is probably spreading.
Because he had lost his way, Big Beard won't be back.
Why yearn for him
like an oldster longing for two glass handballs.
Stack up lots of seat cushions.
Gloomy like an aged lama in a grotto.
Never again can anyone sneak inspiration to me through my ear.
Sitting under that lamp
can it really be bright?
A Red Color Emerges Out of My Skin [皮肤中浮现了红色] August 1988
In front of cool, bright windows
like ripe apples
we expose a level of lovely radiance.
I know
it is a leech
wanting to bore into the perfect entrails of my body.
When I face other faces,
I can only laugh along with them.
From this person to that
a radiance that gushes back and forth
leaves me empty handed.
Never wanting to touch people again.
I stare at my skin.
Watch the color of others
slowly emerge from it.
Don't talk of impersonating an apple.
Being a light.
Impersonating a gentle woman.
Everything above my stomach
tightens with fear.
Exposing myself to the outside is very dangerous.
I'm one forced to reflect light.
Daytime. The city wears shiny wooden shoes.
I'm its toes
stared at by a multitude of eyes.
When will that day
come again, misty as a poem.
A Person with a Pineapple in Hand [手拿菠萝的人] 1991
Someone with a fresh pineapple their hand
comes walking down from a patch of brightness,
masters the fragrance of golden fruit.
The path through
winds like a python toward me.
Footsteps that fall to the dust
float and flutter marvelously.
I'll never be able to get a clear
head-on look at those to come.
The odor of large celestial bodies
above the dirt
are many lofty smells --
just like a great man moving on the surface of the sea.
And their fruit cannot help
but fall among us.
Indifferently loved.
We pass through illumination.
No benevolent arm
fells the unfortunate.
The pineapple holder
walks now into the far distance.
I sigh over the smallness of the distant traveler
like a brown pine needle
in the north wind.
A House of Great Depth [很纵深的房子] 1991
Mangos on the table.
I open today's window.
The house is stuffed with mangos.
sunlight laughs like a woman
warm and flush.
Fruit undulate on her body.
For many years now not only green
fruit has come tumbling down.
The heads of Dao Zhi[1] and the King of Qin[2]
fell back to earth too.
The splendors dim.
We build
our own house.
Pleased to have no doors no windows.
Hear my vivacious
gold horizon incessantly.
Hear the beauty
in me when I have sunk low,
sick of being the realist.
This is a happy day.
It's the day I can see mangos.
From Seeing a Friend [看望朋友] a series of 6 poems, 1992
#1
On this, Beijing's coldest day,
I almost shrink
back as I walk toward you.
Your hands
hang limply down.
People say that inside is
the hot air of Chinese herbal medicine.
I can't see the temperature.
Can't see your illness.
Just as I can't see through
the compound-dwelling holding you firm and deep.
Standing in front of your bed
I'm a patch of heavy fog.
The backs of your hands
secrete a weak white light like the moon's.
I dare not callout
your name of over two years' pain.
I understand all the world's affairs.
only when I'm closest to you
I discover
I can't even say
what sickness is.
#3
With what can you feel
me under this lamp.
Do you want to touch this ball of light.
One hand can
rustle the locust tree leaves of the entire city.
But this hand droops low.
A soft bed sinks you down deep.
And I've only brought
today's cold air.
How can I be a ball of light.
We stand in the same shadow.
During your two years in a soporific state
I always cautiously
stroked our degrees of difficulty.
It is those difficulties
that cause you to immediately recognize me.
Your thin cataracts creep down
from a mountain peak thick with misery.
Finally, I see your smile.
#4
In the last
tiniest
remaining corner of the world
I run into a deceit
Somebody leans low over the bed saying
you're prettier than ever.
The people outside love you even more.
Only one step away from deceit
I can't expose.
You probably come to for a few minutes only.
I want to say
If you look at them long enough, red pills are a lot like seeds.
What I really want to say is
people like best
gathering around for a close look
at a wound.
I can't help wanting to cover up
everything on the outside.
Day by day a complicated fear
coils through my heart.
The quilt is covered
by the wrinkles put in it.
I don't know what angle to stand at
or how many hands to use
to block the line of sight flickering in your eyelashes.
#5
Remember when at my house
you said you envy my quiet
empty flower vase.
Now
several medicine bottles are half empty.
Numberless pills
prop up your consciousness.
Tranquility is dead water
spreading out sleek white silk.
Can others make the air laugh.
Help a stone find strength.
And make suffering
pull out its sword.
A massive illness
drills into your slight kindly body.
Miracles like angels
soar elegantly above.
Nobody can carry off
the hope in an empty bottle.
No person can control
your coma gliding across the four seasons.
#7
Slowly, slowly
I remember each old friend.
They refuse to write.
Refuse to phone.
Deep in fear of reality knocking on their doors.
The old friends
come down with a yesterday syndrome.
When all living things are up against the wind
your soul
keeps its beautiful black eyes open throughout.
Listen and you'll hear
think and you'll imagine
the houses of old friends roar
and lift painful, long flames.
These robust people
what are they waiting for.
You say you want to go
From days in flames
to days in flames
it's so close
With light hands and light feet
old friends have already opened front doors for you.
#9
I dare not walk close to you.
Dare even less to take leave.
Your parents
like a church packed with believers.
Stand by the aged stair-well.
Because of you
their radiance has all peeled away.
Your black cloud
envelops the hill that gazes at you.
Hide you in sickness.
Hide you in medicine.
Hide you in hearts with holes.
A person who doesn't walk on the street
very quickly everyone forgets.
Days and days.
You walk while lying alone face up.
In Heaven the weight of the great
oaken gates resounds incessantly.
At the final moment the tears arrive.
All hatred and consolation blurs.
Quickly walk back onto the street.
In your ears
from left to right
you're run through by the muffled toll of a bell.
#10
I've seen pain with my own eyes.
A bright red leech
easily slices through your translucent body.
With my eyes I saw
a person broken without a sound.
Like a coiling
tangled cord.
I've seen death with my own eyes.
A stuppa standing on a precipitous height.
Life's wrinkles
bunch up at the peak of the wind's forehead.
I saw all this myself.
As the links peeled off,
a thin weak sound.
One vein
makes cotton and diamonds
diamonds and blank paper
blank paper and plasma
plasma and abruptly changing airflows
form a common link.
I've seen everything with my own eyes.
The Softest Season [最软的季节] May 1993
In the month of May
I can see farthest.
Memories like new bugs
agitate a hillside's south face.
I know
the softest season will soon arrive.
In May
of course I can see you.
Again you're made up as the finest gossamer
sadly, sweetly mounting
my enclosing walls two thousand kilometers away.
I decide
to forget the whole of my life.
I have no connection to you.
My water
neither forms ice nor is it warm.
Nobody can move me
not even May.
Today my solidness
surpasses that of any shell-bearing seed.
Spring is as short as a fingernail.
And I never again need be your tree
performing season after season.
Now
I carry my own roots.
Tread on my own brittle branches rotten leaves.
I See the Potatoes [看到土豆] May 1993
When I see a basket of potatoes
my heart's as happy as if I'd run into a wandering soul.
Joy makes a
hot-headed north-easterner.
I want to look closely at their facial features
find out what has happened.
All my body's tight suture lines break.
I want to immediately stop
I want to halt the whole of me.
Ask a cigarette of a heavy smoker
I want his last cigaretfe.
No blow
can surpass that of a basket of potatoes.
Return to the past
like drifting to Jupiter on a pair of feet.
But today I saw potatoes.
In a trice I tread
Jupiter's burning rings of light.
People Waiting for Buses [等巴士的人们] 1993
The morning sun
shines on a bus stop.
Some are painted with oils
suddenly they have kind pleasant looks
These are such nice people.
Light descends
amidst a crowd waiting for a bus
utterly without mercy
splitting each in two.
I suspect
behind the nice people
those dark colorless ones are bad.
No bus for a long long time
the brilliant eye-catching sun can't wait any more.
The oil paints will also run away
the good and bad people
change inch by inch.
The places just now petty and dull
take on bright charm.
God
your light
wavers so.
You pitiful
high fevered blind man
The good you see is evil too
the evil also good.
Later the bus stop is vacant
black clouds trick the god into an abyss.
Weakness Comes So Quick [脆弱来得这么快] 1993
I've never seen this expression on your face.
No wonder
all the china is smashed. Every bottle is broken to bits.
You're motionless
as if all the shards of your body's glass are about to fall.
The door is a devil opening in a flash.
You halt at the doorway.
Needles of light surely stab you deep in the back
your expression stops at lightning's start. Feet covered by snowflakes
leave you standing in slivers of silver the whole world now dazzlingly bright.,
A sky full of translucent objects and suddenly the sky flows.
Where have you tucked away your up-lifting looks you're such a hopeless l_p.
In your eye is a nose in the nose a mouth
in the mouth ears
on your face nothing.
Your expression terrifies me I really didn't know
weakness could come so quick
Alive [活着] 1993
Sunlight walks outside the home.
In the home am I
a calm, collected idler
Three meals a day
handling docile vegetable hearts
my hands
float in a semi-transparent white china bowl.
When I think of other things
the white rice has already been
cooked into white food again.
The screen door
stands straight in the wind like a servant boy
watching me sleep through an afternoon of sudden light and dark.
My letterbox is packed with dust.
A person at home
waits for nothing.
All around the house
are dangerous winding pipes.
Poured full
of water, gas or electrical currents
they snuggle up close around me
with a casual flick of a switch
in front and behind me
the appropriate measures of water and fire burst out.
The sun and moon are in the sky
this is a day without traces.
Behind a peasant the color of soy sauce
I lean down to pat a long, round melon.
The slight yellowness on its back is
the isolated form of the sun.
For no reason
just alive
like turning on a thread of running water at a whim.
Only I have tried
the uncertain perilous atmosphere
slicing through the surface of this world.
I live plainly like this.
My fire is
forever wrapped in my writing paper
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