^{translated from the Chinese by Joshua Edwards and Lynn Xu}

1.

No,
Behind the truth are other truths

2.

Rain makes a painting on the earth 
In the classical manner
Meticulously depicting what’s hidden from view:
Mountain, forest, valley, gorge
Building, vehicle, person 
Beasts, cattle, creeping things, and flying fowl
Gradually expressing the outline 
From invisible to visible 
From solid state to a state of change 

Is this a form of justice? 
Rain, and representations of rain 
Shrouds, and the shroud’s ability to obscure and to change 

This is like one who suffers 
Crying
To describe the hunter, the torturer, the thief, the grifter, and the assassin 
The one who suffers uses tears and exacting brush strokes
To scrub away the silk threads of pain, endless sorrow, sharp anguish, heartache, bloodletting grief, pain of breaking bone, pain of a thousand cuts, pain of losing one’s soul . . .

How many tears 
Are needed to provoke 
Another’s tears of sympathy?

Pain forms the boundary between life and death 
Rain is another name for heaven and earth 

All in the end is water

獻給苦難中的眾生

—1—
 

不，

在真相的背後還有真相


—2—

 

雨在大地上作畫
用工筆
細細描繪那些遮蔽物：
山、林、溝、壑
>建築、車輛、人
走獸，飛禽，爬蟲
使其漸漸顯出輪廓
從隱形，到顯像
從固態，到變、化

這是某種形式的正義嗎？
雨，和雨的描繪
遮蔽，和遮蔽的隱形與變化

這就如同 痛者
以眼淚<
描摹獵者、虐者、竊者、快者和忍者
痛者以眼淚、工筆
刷洗絲絲之痛，磅礡之痛，細密之痛，錐心之痛，泣血之痛，裂骨之痛，凌遲之痛，失魂之痛……

要多少眼淚
才能令他者
掬一掊同情之淚？

痛是生者與死的邊界
雨是天壤之別稱

而這一切皆歸於水

What seeps in me from weeks of rain 
making me forget 
the life-give part in water. 

The world this morning 
reminds me too much 
of my insides that night I almost 

abandoned the balcony. 
Three pages deep of furious 
language. Scratching 

worry into my journal 
before I can say, please, 
let me 

stop. Notice, 
on the outside table 
this jagged bouquet: 

tobacco seeds, dried, 
still attached to the cut 
few inches of their last-year stalks, 

wrinkled fire 
in a mini vase. It doesn’t look much 
like promise, but it is. 

When you speak,
seeing not through 
your self but through
the eyes of the land,
the voice you hear
is no longer yours.

You have not planned
the words you speak,
your only script
is the indrawn breath
that brings to you
the scent of pine,
brings to your throat
the first morning mist,
brings to your lungs
the cedar smoke 
from the fire
where stones are
the heartbeat of flame.

So you speak
and what you say
when it is given
voice this way

speaks with the wind
and all things that breathe,
wli dogo wongan,
all our relations.