by Ouyang Yu
one stumbling step after another, we managed to struggle back to the city
then we had the mosquito-repellent agent
the mosquito-smoke-out paper and the nylon mosquito net
as well as the mosquito-destroying perfume
that was reputedly destructive and healthy
but there wasn’t one day i did not get a bite
what can i do, i thought
isn’t it because of these mosquitoes
that my life becomes more imaginative
and their existence more hopeful
because of me?
Untitled
standing alone among fallen flowers
i am silently facing the morning breeze
when the breeze disappears
my shoulders are covered with fallen red
Morning Flowers
their blue petals, in pairs, like round fans
were shivering in the shimmering morning light, shivering
their tender leaves rolling up their tongues, tiny round
tubes
on the tip of spitting
the sky-holding trees were also shaking their round fans,
blue petals
in pairs, were dancing in the shimmering morning light ...
Listening to Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’
the round moon hanging
over the tip of the cliff
his black silhouette in the middle of the moon
a row of pointed pines behind him
coated with white silver
at his foot
the ocean surging
with shining waves
Wild Grass
if love
like you
can burst out
from the decayed roots
in new buds
i could
die now
After the Evening Rain
as the light of the setting sun was dripping onto the dew
of the tung tree
and the confused crows were noisy around the purple pond
the village girl was coming home carrying her beans
her feet naked and white ploughing through the mud
Moonrise
(on Henry Adams’ photographic work)
boundless darkness
moon
the graveyard without trees
green light
a long board holding up the smooth snow cloud
a round skull
housetops, tombstones, village walls, boulders, crosses
a layer of white shadows
The Evening Sun
The path tortuous, the path invisible, the path pale, the
path long
The path precipitous
The thorny undergrowth, green branches, leaves, tree
grains, stumps
Wow! A row of pine trees shrouded in a black fog
I reached my hand held high up to pick
The ripe golden orange
The Rain
the leaves of the wutong tree soughing
the wind sound asleep in the green
dripping, chirping
one dimple after another on the water
the umbrella slipping pit-pat by
the leaves of the wutong tree soughing
Low Voices
If I can see them
They must be able to see me
They are twinkling there, gathering together
Separated by a distant universe
If I can see them
They must be able to see me
They are dancing in the bonfire
Their lengthened shadows leaping in my face
If I can see them
They must be able to see me
The forest cut down neatly
The mountains remaining still
If I can see them
They must be able to see me
When there is only a single light on
The night is ten times as dark
If I can see them
They must be able to see me
Things that you are searching for have not been found
But things found have been lost
If I can see them
They must be able to see me
When the moon is shedding its light everywhere
People are asleep
If I can see them
They must be able to see me
Music has invaded the soul
And the wilderness is occupied by passions
If I can see them
They must be able to see me
The entrance is on the left-hand side
But the exit is somehow on the right-hand
If I can see them
They must be able to see me
The listener finds it hard to open his mouth
And the speaker opens his mouth but has nothing to say
If I can see them
They must be able to see me
The rain chases the wind
The spring follows the autumn in close steps
If I can see them
Can they really see me?
I Shall Go To A Remote Place
i shall go to a remote place
far away from my home town
when the hometown cherry flower is snowing
the withered trees there will resemble broken intestines
abandoned
i shall go to that remote place
far away from my friends and family
with the warm quilt and wife
carrying with me only a warm memory
i shall climb high mountains and low hills
i shall cross rivers and oceans
i shall sow seeds in the poor soil
and reap ripe hopes by autumn
The Kite
my heart is a red kite
flying high
into the snow-white cloud
it is however unable to rid myself
of the invisible line held in her hand
The Confessions of a Pig
i have a feeling that my days are numbered
i can eat three meals a day plus fish and meat continuously
i am getting fat putting on weight
i have learnt to bow and scrape before the visiting vips
i can sleep particularly well and without a dream
and i am clean and moral
for i do not have heterosexual or homosexual sex
castrated i am clean and i am moral
and i’ve got feelings at heart for my comrades
although i have to use my snout against them
to scramble for an eating spot in the trough
and i abide by the rules and i follow the regulations
i sleep my sleep when they are dragged out to the abattoir
what can i do as they are issued by my superiors
which i must obey
although i do sympathize with them but i have no
tongue to speak out
and it is really good to eat and drink any way
god has endowed me with a pig’s brain
and a pig’s brain to eat/drink/sleep
why should i imagine why should i rebel why should i create
my role is to get fat and put on weight
an order i must follow
i am clean i am moral i engage in no promiscuous sex
and i don’t open my mouth when something unjust happens
but i am nearing my death!
take me out and kill me i scream kill me i scream
i must feed you full to transcend my body
i must feed you full to fly beyond my brain
i must feed you full to gain a new life
to imagine to rebel to create
to turn god’s gift into a human brain
Untitled
I stood silent in the darkness,
took off the mud-clogged rubbers and stole on
the edge of her bed, as the cold win
d knocked on the window
whistling all over, I, leaning over her,
saw her sad face turned, covered in hand,
a broken tear squeezed
from two fingers, throwing back a faint yellow lamp
from the night-deserted path, caressingly, I reached
her icy cheeks,
the wind thumped the window for a practical joke
to see what’s going on here, I embraced her,
the darkness embraced us, the heavy rain,
our hut, and my rubbers
silently askew below the bed
Dusk in a Wuhan Suburb
up a rickety lamp post
is climbing a full deep red moon
lotus leaves are flying across
with a swollen white shirt
two paths meet
beneath my feet and disappear in my eyes
fire! bats are tumbling about
a lone tree is shooting into the sky
a woman, silent, stands by the road
watching the flames swallowing books across which i step
a few more turns, and i see the moon
ballooning plump on the tip of a black building
A Blind Fortune-teller Tells Me That
If you are ugly
You must have a beautiful wife or vice versa
If you have children now
You must have turned your love elsewhere
If you were solitary in your childhood
You’ll remain so until your death
If you love moon more than sun
It is proof enough that you are not loved
If you love thinking more than eating
You are destined to suffer for life
If you love freedom more than serfdom
You have not been used enough to the bars of prison
If you love poetry, my friend
Better like me, give up your sight and go blind
Life
Only these few yuan now
To buy shorts for my boy a shirt for my wife
And rice for meal a poison coil for mosquitoes
And, yes, a cattail leaf fan and a sleeping mat
Oh, I have to sell my life to buy it back again!
Carefully, I cup the half-torn paper notes on the counter
Against a strong snatch of draught from the open door
“A small champagne and a packet of Always Bright, please!”
In order not to sell my life to buy it back
(I have lived that way for 29 years)
I must drink tonight and smoke over the family dishes:
salted eggs and small roasted fish
Strangling
TV persecutes me far into the night
Forcing me and my cigarettes to pace up and down in
the moon shade by the wall
To avoid the city’s noose and pit of burying one alive
I hide myself in a small town, unexpectedly girdled by
the philistines
Unable to bear the foul smell of chicken’s cage and the
turbulence of human desires
My heart runs in the Olympic Games at 100 metres
Green peaks are crashed against my bosom
Gashing out greener blood while the sky leans at my
ears, giving out blue cries
I chase my imaginations, drifting with the rolling
yellow waves
Moonlight freezes me into perpetually moving ice debris
On the deserted wasteland let me embrace you from
the grave: Hope
Although you have been strangled a thousand times
An Illusion
from a distance
i heard you calling in a low voice
a lonely, thin figure
standing at the end of the road
the light went suddenly out
in a red, pit-a-pat fog
so i threw down the weapon
fashioned out of a 5,000-year history
the night was oozing with crystalline and transparent sweat
abandoning itself to the boundless stroke by the moon
i reached for the mute mailbox
and put the pregnant hope into your lips slightly ajar
I Said to My Son
China does not contain the world
But the world contains China
China is the ship
The world is the ocean
China is too small
The world is too big
China is the star
The world is the space
You want to be the ship when you grow up
Or the ocean?
The star
Or the eternal space?
Dusk in Shanghai
After dinner
A look around the street
At women
The purchase of a packet of cigarettes
Back
To sit near the window
With nothing to do
A swallow of dried meat floss like hay
Ears open for the onslaught of pop songs
Sunlight glued to the windowpanes
Like transparent plastic wrapper
The mosquito net
Criss-cross with the black frames
Floating with the breeze
A troupe of birds flitting across
Black silhouette
As large as a second
My heart
Not fluttering
But thinking
Birds, oh birds, off, off
And away
The blue sky
Framed the dark-red ridge of the opposite roof
The windowpane
Framing
My darkened
Figure
Night
1
a red, full moon
over a drunken old willow tree
half leaning
with a headful of dishevelled hair
against
a silvery river
2
so dark
that the stones reflected
the starlight
3
as
i have been watching the stars for too long
even the dry road
is shining with stars
The Shadow
twenty years on—
you still hang over my head
when i was a
fallen grass
your massive bronze wall was pressing down
and the day was turned into the night like hell
i shook my dreamy head
green flowers, white blood and blue fire
my hope in childhood
had eventually grown into a great tree holding up the sky
it had walked thousands of miles in the wilderness
grabbing at the sunshine greedily
the crooked trunk
looked blue, white and green
you – the shadow twenty years ago
was twining around my treetop like a nightmare, black as hell
X
i’m an unknown figure
i can’t be plus/minus/multiplied/divided
my square root can’t be extracted
nor can it be calculated on a computer
i could be one
i could be a billion
i sometimes am infinitely great
i sometimes am infinitely small
i wish to be a zero
but i can’t change my nature of change
i wish for transmutation and transformation
but often i can’t move a step
i am as long
as any human history can be
i am as vast
as any space in the universe
i am not afraid of change
nor am i afraid of repetition
i renew myself after each change
i go deeper after each repetition
i am an unknown figure
i remain a mys
tery
those who know english know
i am an x
Insomnia
the colour of memory
is white
the white of paper
written with blue
words
reminding
the memory
of everything
it can’t remember
an unrecoverable
floppy disk
the blue disk cover
the black tape
rolls of memory
words input onto the screen
this black fly
hovering over my head
black memory of tonight
will remember its buzzing noise
and traces of its flying
in a future moment?
this memory
is white
blue
and night whitening under the lamp
On An Autumn Night
my imagination in the hollow moonlight
froze into tranquility
in the depth of the night
someone was driving the remnant of today
time dripped floating from the branches
and turned into the colour of autumn
the air held its breath
listening for the far and near dogs barking
my pen was tracing the contours of the night
through the vastness of space
and on this autumn night of my life
my thoughts were slowly turning yellow
A Poem of the Moment
when you are holding a body
you are holding the time
the ticking of every second
takes you to eternity
Second Drifting
i remember i died once
when i left china
the sky on my way to an alien country
was strewn with an ashen memory
among the comings and goings of people in the airport
no one came to my funeral
i sang an elegy in a low voice
for my grey past
over the blue pacific ocean
i buried my old dreams
folding the serviettes into pure-white flowers
i paid my last respects to a land that no longer
belonged to me
since then the home in my heart
has been sent into eternal exile
on departing australia now