by Ouyang Yu
before you could put out your hand
the shadow was already gone
Great Ocean Road
the april plain rolled out round haystacks
yellow all the way up to the horizon
fast disappearing ponds
thin-necked black swans
hills nearby puffed out their naked chests
and water distinguishable from the sky only by a single thread
dark hair of the sheep carved in stillness in the grass and disabled cars waited for eternity in empty grounds
dog-tailed grass, umbrella-like, shook their wind-bells eucalyptus, criss-cross, all over the hills
and lovely aspens hung with their delicate, round leaves half fallen, half clinging
the twelve apostles gazed at each other in silence
leaving tourists to take their easy photos
and i thought that i understood their unspoken words:
how could this land be settled without an enterprising spirit?
but the chinese left like swarms of locusts
after they had captured the strange scenery in their
japanese cameras
The Autumn Country
in the autumn
the wild grass by the roadside was as yellow as the afterglow in the western sky
night birds
chirped only once or twice unintelligibly all night
time
gradually cooled down the skin and permeated every
pore of the world
dogs barking
were the only sign of live communication for this vast continent
the moon
was trudging once again through the super-short memory of the city
and i
felt the micro earthquake of my blood with the return of language
The Double Man
my name is
a crystallisation of two cultures
my surname is china
my given name australia
if i translate that direct into english
my surname becomes australia
my given name china
i do not know what motherland means
i possess two countries
or else
i possess neither
my motherland is my past
my motherland is my present
my past motherland is my past
my present motherland is my present
when i go to china
i say i’m returning to my home country
when i go to Australia
i say i’m returning to my home country
wherever i go
it is with a heart tinged in two colours
although there is han jian in chinese
there isn’t ao jian in english
i write in chinese
like australians do in english
our motherlands have one thing in common:
they’ve both lost M
i have nullified my home
i have set up a home
in two hundred years’ time
i shall be the father of the double man
Note: han jian: Chinese traitor; ao jian: Australian traitor.
On a Sunny Noon
on a sunny noon
i was eating
a delicious fish head
sucking
its eyes
one by one
it was
the head
of a fish
that used to swim
in the murray
it used to
swim through
the murky waters
of the murray
in the same radiant and enchanting
sunlight
Permanently Resident in an Alien Country
i’ve had another dream
in this season of not many dreams
that i own everything
except myself
i turn into a strange flower by night
but only see streaks of silver by day
my old country and me
we see each other on tv
and my future home is
but a castle floating in air
i have no land of my own
but a whole person of wishes
the end of a century is followed by its beginning
and whose soul will visit here in my absence?
the last rain of tonight
sounds like the weeping of the spring
bored, i put into the computer
the melancholy of a big city
Watching the Moon
a cigarette is a section of this life
looking up at the blue smoke ascending
towards the moon in the garden
i feel that this section of my life is ascending
and disappearing on its way to the moon
you and me
we are facing each other
through the branches
in your eyes my life
is this red light on the end of a cigarette
that shortens as it burns
and you
are a changeless mirror over the centuries
reflecting me
reflecting my life as this ascending blue smoke
rushes towards you
turns this brief moment
into your bright light
your context
Variations of a Night
the moonlight is a cold worm
wriggling into the hole of my window
the gully water is running
deep somewhere down under
the untitled wind
is being held up on the teeth of the night
the stillness is a man
pacing up and down the empty brain
many selves of selves
are watching my own tillering
the touch of a pen on paper
spreads the twitterings of a language
and the moon melts into quicksilver
flooding the sky of the memory
Christmas, 1993
this is the season of death
the wind blew from i know not where through the sky over the desert
bringing rain that sounded like sharp teeth of rats
gnawing at an upturned galvanised iron bucket under the palm tree
i was ransacking the luggage of a silent memory for rubbish that was dreamlike and undreamlike a fin-de-siècle wanderer
drifted to the most desolate corner of the heart “it was not that there is nowhere else to go in life but that there are things of the past everywhere” the sound of death was floating up and down in the sea of night
as empty as rodents
when every christmas tree was lit up
your face would open up again
to present another world before you
Untitled
on those long, long days
the postman only comes once a day
and i remember once again
those illusions that visited upon me
that i’m living in a remote country
in a street whose name i can’t begin to recall
spending another season alone
waiting for the postman that comes once a day
which may be the same for them
i see a hand
slowly open
the empty letterbox
under the long, long day
Untitled
summer night. the sky laden with great star fruit
throws down black shadows everywhere
as lights paint the wind on my brown legs
the wind blows the lights into a pond of ripples
the sleepy man tired of his distant desires
down there, the wild barking of a dog
tonight, my heart laden with great star fruit
quiet, heavy, and ripe
Island
surrounded
by
the
moon and stars
remote
alone
and
tiny
with yellings that cannot be heard
a
curl of
whitish smoke
hangs
over
the
deserted ocean
and
the
bled sky
Untitled
My baby was crawling in bed
I had put a picture a few inches before him
Clumsily, kicking his tiny legs
he reached for the edge of the picture
and would have got it had I not moved it further away he had to crawl forward to it, bawling
and was beside himself with joy when he grabbed it in hand at which I burst into laughing—
all of a sudden his tiny clumsy body turned into mine trudging through an uninhabited barren marshland
lured by a beautiful picture in the distance forging ahead tirelessly
while my standing self at bedside turned into Him
who was looking down through thick clouds with
piercing eyes
at my body distorted beyond recognition merely in
search of the thing
crying for loss and laughing for gain
I burst into laughing—for my son had once more grabbed it in hand
At Dusk
the green grass is splashing
the shrill cries of the skylarks suddenly going out
great blotches of ink
in the long chirping of the clarinet insects
a black dog emerges and disappears
the wind is lifting
among dense clusters of stems
my eyelashes and the grass blades
blossoms yellow and white
fall cracking down like stones
are shiveringly expectant
these wordless bats
Note: this poem could also be read in the order of lines 1 3 2 4/5 7 6 8/9 11 10 12
Ashes
I do not know where I should send them:
This spiritual rubbish, mountains of corpses
Bringing back the anger of daily and nightly labour
The deep night in the pen streaming endlessly
The star of lamplight burning to the bottom of the heart
Ashes
Sedimentation of life
Why not tear them into flying pieces
Turn the hot summer
Into a dreamless snow
So white
That no trace of words can be found
“Tonight Is My Birth Night”
tonight is my birth night
a simple one at that
i am thirty now, i’m tired, i need some rest,
strolling in the garden, i swoon with the laurel flowers
tonight last year where was i? ten years or twenty years
ago
where was i?
was i walking down the dark mountain lane rank with
weeds forehead high
or with eyes too drunken to see the faces swimming
around in the restaurant?
can’t remember. have i ever lived? where is the proof?
he who walks in heaven leaves no traces
the moon never smiles, so near, yet so far
the nights are filled with the newborn baby’s cry for
help, low murmurs, silences
have i ever lived?
have i?
where is the proof?
in the river
before the eye
on the heaven beneath the feet
The Dog Outside the Door
that dog just wanted to get in
baring his teeth he kept on barking
i said: do not let him in do not let him
the old man said: let him in there’s no point asking for
trouble
the dog came in quite restless, sniffing at my feet and at my brain
i couldn’t read i couldn’t think i had to serve him until
i got tired
i said: i’ll get rid of him once and for all
the old man said: you can’t, believe it or not
finally i hacked at the head of the dog with a kitchen
knife in anger
the knife drew a circle in the air and landed on my own
neck
i cried and dropped dead
the old man did not cry but said to the dog: thank you
my god
Untitled
youthful days—
we were going down the river
the course of which was tortuous
no-one knew where we were going
beautiful were the torrential clouds
beautiful were the fully-blooming waves
beautiful
were those roarings
at night
those callings
in the early mornings
and those high singings and low chantings
they were mudcoloured and murky
they were blue and pure
and they were
the heaven and the earth
the dead
are forgotten
the living
will join them
flowing
now rapidly
now smoothly
flowing
we shall find our way to the ocean just as
the ocean will find the sky
no one pays any attention
to some stranded on the shallow shore
some
who have gone along the forest path
and others
who cross themselves in silence
no one knows where they’ve come from
no one wants to retrace their steps
and no one can retrieve their
youthful days
flowing like this
down the big river
The Train
wherever i go
i am alone
when i plough through the still canyons of cities
crowds of buildings hold aloof from me
days and nights watch me loaded with strange heads
tramping from place to place
without friends without love
my companions are all like me, blackened and soiled
i speed up roaring, quickening
but am never able to run out of the binding rails
one place after another i go, welcomed only
by the signal flags, peddlers on the platforms, and
travellers
dead nights on the desert and the plains and in the
mountains
i listen to my own timeless coughs and wheezes
occasionally amazed by a glimpse of white water and
wild red
i wish to stop but they’ve shot past
perhaps it’s my will to be exiled so
or i’m in love with my own fetters
without tears without yelling
i speed up roaring with white puffs of steam and i go
The Wanderer
you have walked for a long time in the territory of the heart
hovering around the edge and dreaming of the freedom
on the other shore
your reality is iron bars
the shadows of the sun ten thousand miles away perhaps
not joined
you are lumbering towards there in response to the
voiceless call
you encounter identical days and nights
everything keeps you at a distance and everything is laughing
you hear secret cries in the middle of a desert and ocean
the bone marrow has turned into fossil before trails of
blood burst into flowers
submerged in sunshine, bars of iron are poking through
seams of cloud
before you catch the sun you have been sunken by the stars
bearing your self you fly with wings bound by the universe
wherever you go it comes back to you
you are yourself and the loss of you
hovering around the border and dreaming of the freedom
on the other shore
you have walked for a long time in the territory of the heart
Beautiful Death
the death of nature is most beautiful
fallen leaves are shedding a solemn golden colour
the lake is sleeping hugging withered trees in its arms
in the pitch-black cavern of a night
no sighs are affected
the most beautiful is the death of nature
a mass of mountains are reduced to a plain in the
twinkling of an eye
a mob of seas are turned into a fine falling drizzle
at the volcano of a grave
are lying face-up the brilliant corpses of stars
the death is the most beautiful of nature
the decaying animal carcass is swarming with thousands
of ants
the felled forest has milky liquid running all over the place
sometimes under a stinking cancer sky
there wafts in the fragrance of the setting sun
the death of nature is the most beautiful
The Bone of a Tree
in winter
when the last leaf is withered
its green cloth vanished
and golden ornament eroded
the beauty emerges:
the steely skeleton of the burned-down high-rise
the intact bone structure
of an animal eaten clean of its skin and flesh
and the bone of a tree like a steel fork
that penetrates into a single moon
An Evening Scene
a red setting sun
glued to the blue water
when the fisherman drags his fishing line
infinite red and blue lights
The Mosquitoes
when i was little
we dispersed the mosquitoes
by burning a coil of white mosquito-repellent incense on a piece of wooden board resembling a chopping block
we grew up with the deep charred ruts on the board
then i went to the countryside
my mosquito net had a hole as big as a window
the mountain people lighting up a bunch of straw threw
it in the middle
of the house and my dreams were burning with smoke each night